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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#61

Post by freeone3000 »

hypercube33 wrote: post #52

Windows 11 has these awful scroll bars - at least on dark mode, that are a hair thin and the bar color is the same almost as the background scroll area and I for the life of me, at under 40 years old, cannot ever figure out /where/ the damn button portion is. Windows 11 also likes to auto-hide scroll bars, and minimize them otherwise which is super weird to me since its supposedly a touch friendly OS (Designed for Su…

Mobile devices have no visible scrollbar unless you are actively scrolling. This is the look they were going for when they say “touch first”. Users are not expected to use the scroll wheel to jump, or click, or do any maneuver more precise than selecting a block of text.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#62

Post by ryokeken »

rubyfan wrote: post #8
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #3

Whenever I read a piece like this or another UX blog, it just becomes so obvious how little we care about a11y. “Good” (as in accessible) design is pretty boring and decluttered compared to most modern expectations of web apps. I read Adam Silver’s book on forms and came away realizing that we’re doing it entirely wrong from an a11y standpoint but that’s just not a priority.

I find it ironic that in order for your comment to be accessible the reader must lookup “a11y” to find that it means “accessibility”.

duuuuuude for real a11y? what kind of weird lingo flex is that?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#63

Post by mostlylurks »

They're getting less usable as well. One of the mice I use daily has had a broken scroll wheel for a few months now and I've been too lazy and/or busy to replace it, and it's shocking how broken scroll bars are if you try to actually use them. Infinitely scrolling content and content that resizes itself when it loads in very frequently combine in ways that make the scroll bar jump around in ways that make navigation very difficult.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#64

Post by least »

kvonhorn wrote: post #45

You know what's an accessibility problem for a lot of people over 40? White text on a dark background. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing people advocate for making web pages readable for people my age. Yeah, opening up the inspector and updating the author's CSS made it readable for me, but made the shell script unreadable.

Unfortunately a lot of accessibility concerns are of competing interest against each other and people making webpages don't have infinite time to allocate to ensuring they have options for everyone. You might consider just disabling css altogether.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#65

Post by nine_k »

InSteady wrote: post #53
kvonhorn wrote: post #45

You know what's an accessibility problem for a lot of people over 40? White text on a dark background. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing people advocate for making web pages readable for people my age. Yeah, opening up the inspector and updating the author's CSS made it readable for me, but made the shell script unreadable.

I'm under 40 and this puts immense strain on my eyes. After reading a few paragraphs if I look over to the wall I will see persistent shadow-text in my vision for 30 seconds or more. Very uncomfortable. It's to the point that if highlighting all the text doesn't mitigate the dark/white contrast, I'll just avoid reading that page entirely.

Wow, that's harsh; sorry to hear that.

I suppose you have already tried to decrease the brightness of your screen. Say, 400 nit at 100% brightness is searing, unless you're under sunlight.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#66

Post by ryokeken »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #11
rubyfan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it ironic that in order for your comment to be accessible the reader must lookup “a11y” to find that it means “accessibility”.

Relatedly, "i18n" is hard for non-native speakers to understand too, how ironically apt.

native speaker of assembly language?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#67

Post by ryandrake »

f33d5173 wrote: post #55
jwells89 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of the original iPhone at least, hiding the scrollbar when not scrolling makes some amount of sense… when your screen is 3.5" in size and your goal is to render content with "desktop" fidelity, there's not a whole lot of room for a scrollbar, plus most people aren't going to be interacting with the scrollbar. For desktop OSes where the smallest screen being used is much larger on the other hand there's…

> there's not much of a good reason to hide them. It looks nicer + you can just use the scroll wheel. A lot of the UI affordances lost over the last decade or two are unfortunate, but complaints about scroll bars seem to be purely baby duck syndrome.

As the article says, not everyone can use a scroll wheel, and not everyone even has a scroll wheel or touchpad. I personally find using mouse scroll wheels quite painful due to RSI caused from decades of mouse abuse. Yet, designers find scroll bars and up-and-down scroll arrows icky so fuck me, I guess. :(

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#68

Post by jwells89 »

hypercube33 wrote: post #57
jwells89 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, we wouldn't need "dark mode" or the such if the UIs had any contrast and were legible. Contrast is a factor yes, but the other thing that's happened with the flat UI epidemic is banishment of mid grays and light grays in favor of stark white and off-whites, making "light mode" much more bright looking than it had been previously. It's no wonder people were clamoring for dark mode after blinding flat UI had ta…

Not only that but it seems like color from icons has gone - now we get black and white ones. I'd get it if these companies making the UX were small, because yes its super hard to deal with accessibility and different color blindness but I agree - we've lost anything but the extremest of the extreme colors.

The ironic thing about icons losing their color and detail is that it happened right as high DPI displays began to become commonplace in consumer hardware. We have these amazing screens with barely visible pixels and excellent color reproduction being wasted on rendering monochrome lines.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#69

Post by speeder »

Pannoniae wrote: post #10

I have come to a funny realisation recently. It's not my eyesight which is becoming worse, it's the UIs which are becoming worse. The tiny scrollbars with laughable contrast are in no way accessible to anyone. I've recently switched to using KDE with the Oxygen theme and it's a joy to use without any eye strain. These scrollbars are absolutely pathetic, with no room for customisation. (good luck theming a locked-down…

I don't use dark mode for contrast, I use because a lot of software "light mode" is just plain white. And screens been getting more and more powerful.

Often using software without white mode the thing is so bright, that the walls near me get lighted up as if I was using a flashlight or something.

Thus I have to make the screen less bright, but often this also make the screen colors and contrast get all screwy and I still can't see anything.

I miss Win 9x era grey interface... it wasn't beautiful but I could actually see stuff.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#70

Post by irrational »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #51
kvonhorn wrote: post #45

You know what's an accessibility problem for a lot of people over 40? White text on a dark background. I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing people advocate for making web pages readable for people my age. Yeah, opening up the inspector and updating the author's CSS made it readable for me, but made the shell script unreadable.

Why do you find it hard to read?

Biology. I’m in my 50s and get an eye exam every year. According to my optometrist my prescription has been stable for about a decade, but I can definitely tell the difference. My eyes do not focus very fast anymore, my eyes do not adjust going from a light space to a dark space or vice versa very fast anymore. I now have to hold books and my phone away from me to bring them into focus. Same with white text on dark backgrounds. I used to use dark themes for everything, but it just doesn’t work for me anymore. I’ve mentioned these to my optometrist and they say that it happens to everyone with age.
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