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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#211

Post by ryandrake »

dgellow wrote: post #12

Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)! Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad. Example: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

Wow, it's truly awful, even on an Apple trackpad or scroll mouse! Like a video except instead of pressing play once, you have to keep scrolling down to play. Why not just embed a video? I know I've seen this terrible pattern on other sites, too.

When I scroll down, I expect one thing to happen: content on the page moves from the bottom to the top, revealing previously un-seen content on the bottom. That's it. Please stop trying to make scrolling do something else!

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#212

Post by richiebful1 »

jfengel wrote: post #136
jakub_g wrote: post #71

If you read between the lines, you should understand that the root cause of issue is the macOS developer monoculture. All you need is one Windows or Linux-based developer in your team to catch those kind of issues. But so many dev teams are macOS-only those days, whereas, apart from US and 2-3 other rich countries, 80%+ or even more of actual desktop users are Windows-based. (There are many other problems with macOS…

From a UX standpoint there's a big advantage to monoculture: the user learns a thing once and applies the idiom everywhere. For most users, diversity of options means having to learn every option. They'd rather have one good thing -- or even one good-enough thing. The world does have a variety of options, so users need to live with the fact that they're going to have to discover things, and designers are going to hav…

The problem is that the UI testing monoculture is on Safari. Safari has 20% market share according to StatCounter (9% desktop market share).

Most users use Chrome on desktop and mobile.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#213

Post by no_wizard »

vbsteven wrote: post #102
jakub_g wrote: post #71

If you read between the lines, you should understand that the root cause of issue is the macOS developer monoculture. All you need is one Windows or Linux-based developer in your team to catch those kind of issues. But so many dev teams are macOS-only those days, whereas, apart from US and 2-3 other rich countries, 80%+ or even more of actual desktop users are Windows-based. (There are many other problems with macOS…

I think the macOS monoculture is going to go away in the next few years because on one side macOS is becoming more and more developer hostile with each release and on the other side WSL (and WSL2) is improving the Windows developer experience a lot. I use Windows as my daily driver OS now for both native/web/mobile/devops work and I expect to see more and more developers making that same switch in the coming years.

I think WSL2 is wonderful, I use it on my primary development machine. Docker doesn't have as many pain points as it used to, and I generally find that I can get around the OS without too much issue, and the new Windows Terminal App helps a ton (its no iTerm2, but its better than anything else I can find)

I still miss macOS, so much, because

- Mac Software I was accustomed to using (and it was lot) is no longer available to me (don't discount this problem when suggesting switching)

- I had to customize Windows 10 a lot, (many hours of work) to emulate native features of macOS I personally can't live without (including remapping keys, which turns out not to be trivial on Windows)

- I miss the general UI polish of macOS. Windows is...ugly in a lot of places.

- I miss Finder, and I've tried so many file explorer alternatives and nothing comes close

- Windows 10 can't seem to ever remember my screen layout for my applications. I had to resort to an application to do this for me. Drives me nuts

- macOS has way better HiDPI support (I have 3 4K monitors)

It ain't trivial, is what I'm saying.

Don't get me started on Linux, I loved Pop OS conceptually, but the support for basic things, like natural scrolling, was completely lacking, and I had to resort to all kinds of hacks to get a desktop semi functional. Not to mention, a lot of Linux 'add on' packages are abandonware and would break constantly when updating to new versions, and for basic things, like dealing with scroll direction, I had to edit files in a terminal, which I just found annoying. It just wasn't a polished out of the box experience. Don't get me started with it not recognizing adapters properly and issues with GPUs. macOS is alot of things, but they take 'just works' more seriously than any other operating system I've ever used.

Honestly, I find it incredibly odd that companies that have more manpower than Apple (you'd be shocked how little manpower they devote to some things) can't manage to pull off the polish of macOS UI

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#214

Post by asciimov »

supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

> For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features.

I'm in my mid-30's and I find Apple awful at discoverability.

Take using Apple Pay. I don't use it often, but covid has had me wanting to. I can't ever seem to remember what sort of hand waving I need to do to get it open. I seem to occasionally bring it up when I don't want to. (It's triple press the home button when the display is off, long press is Siri.)

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#215

Post by Steltek »

leonidasv wrote: post #150
xur17 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

Just a minor nitpick, macOS has true bash. It just doesn't have the GNU coreutils, instead it uses the BSD-based equivalents. And yeah, they suck a lot[1], but there's a way to fix if you use Homebrew: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57973942/8280773 [1] Performance-wise and also when you take into account that most shell scripts/tutorials on the internet are written with a GNU userland in mind.

macOS has a 12+ year old bash. Also, even with Homebrew patching up Apple's neglect, coreutils behaves differently under a Darwin kernel than Linux. A repeat source of aggravation for myself is the behavior of 'ps'.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#216

Post by leptons »

reidjs wrote: post #141
doktorhladnjak wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in this bubble overestimate the popularity of anything Apple. I once had a discussion with a coworker at a major company known for its app, where I was complaining about an Android bug and he genuinely asked "does anybody even use Android?" And I responded, "only the majority of users in every country around the world including the US. It's even 50/50 on our app!" Afterward, I found the internal numbers for em…

Users or customers? Is it possible more revenue was coming from iOS users?

If you design your site/app in the Applethink-bubble, then maybe you're missing out on quite a lot of market share if the majority of people with devices find your Applethink site/app difficult to use.

Make stupid design choices, win less customers.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#217

Post by Klathmon »

baggy_trough wrote: post #187
reaperducer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features You don't even have to be elderly. The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears. How did that conversation go? Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go? Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or…

Even worse than undiscoverable features are land mine features, where some subtle gesture triggers a wild and unwanted mode change. Extra credit if the mode change is hard to get out of.

There's a windows feature like this which I hate with a passion. If you grab a window and shake it side to side, it minimizes all open windows...

So sometimes I'll grab a window to move to my left monitor, decide instead I want it on the right one, and suddenly everything is gone and I now need to go open every single window one at a time. It even took me months to understand that the shaking was what caused it. I would just sometimes be working and suddenly everything is gone and I had no idea why.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#218

Post by II2II »

supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

The first thing I thought of while reading your comment were graphical adventure games, where you pretty much had to click on everything to see what did something.

The fundamental difference with modern user interfaces is that you now have to tap, drag your finger across the screen in different directions, drag both fingers across the screen in different directions, pinch, unpinch, and whatever other gestures seem to be relevant to the situation. For good measure, try gestures that don't seem to be relevant either because the software may surprise you!

Now I know that a lot of these user interface decisions do offer value, but they are only valuable if you know that they exist.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#219

Post by pbhjpbhj »

missblit wrote: post #101
dusted wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, that's pretty terrible, I always scroll with the mouse wheel, since I'm tool old to be rubbing a plate of glass and not feel like a moron. But this one, made my finger hurt a bit and I din't even make it half way down.

I have a "Mitsumi Standard Scroll" mouse that has a scroll button that you can hold down instead of a wheel that you have to keep spinning. It's so much easier on the fingers that I'm amazed I haven't been able to find it anywhere else.

Often you can middle-click-drag to scroll. That is click the scrollwheel down like a button, hold, and you should get a scroll icon appear; move the mouse up or down (sometimes left-right as well) and it will scroll.

Some mice (Microsoft ones IME) have horribly clunky middle-click, at least the Logitech mice I normally use are softer with less travel, which I prefer.

Not all apps seem to allow middle-click on Win10. I can't recall any that didn't on KDE though.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#220

Post by Kwantuum »

hellofunk wrote: post #181
xur17 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

To suggest that “bug wise“ it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don’t have to worry about much if you’re using a Mac. I’m not gonna say that one of the…

To equate lack of peripheral support to "bugs" is hilarious.
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