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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#81

Post by wilg »

nine_k wrote: post #59

The author sees half the problem and offers the worse half of a solution. A scrollbar is not only a control, it's also an indicator . It shows where your viewport is relative to the bigger view, e.g. a long list. Hiding scrollbars, like some [redacted] GUIs like macOS do, is just acutely impolite, much like making buttons indistinguishable from text, or putting light grey text on a light grey background. A solution e…

??? macOS (and iOS) is designed this way because of the gesture you want! You don't need the scrollbar because you have the gesture. If you want to see where you are in the page you just scroll a teeny bit. It works great, I haven't seen a scrollbar in years and its never a problem. Sure, some accessibility options are nice for some people.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#83

Post by wilg »

pitterpatter wrote: post #75
nine_k wrote: post #59

The author sees half the problem and offers the worse half of a solution. A scrollbar is not only a control, it's also an indicator . It shows where your viewport is relative to the bigger view, e.g. a long list. Hiding scrollbars, like some [redacted] GUIs like macOS do, is just acutely impolite, much like making buttons indistinguishable from text, or putting light grey text on a light grey background. A solution e…

>A solution exists, and is nearly universally implemented: scroll wheels on a mouse, and scroll gestures on a trackpad. So you didn't read the article huh. The very first paragraph says: >“Ah”, they say, “that’s what the scroll wheel is for”. My friend, not everyone can use a scroll wheel or a swipe up touch screen. Or literally the next paragraph about difficulties small/hidden scrollbars cause with other input meth…

What's stopping those input methods from having a special scroll gesture that is optimal for their input medium? But sure, have an accessibility override for giant scrollbars.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#84

Post by wruza »

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.

I’m using Dark Reader extension on sites like that. It may sound absurd to do that, but it actually re-colors bs colorschemes and has quick settings for relative brightness, contrast and saturation, so you can tune it to acceptable levels. Without it my eyes bleed on dark toxic sites as much as yours. It also works good with syntax highlighting, because it uses “dynamic coloring” which guesses best color maps for every page.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#85

Post by wilg »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #30
NateSwift wrote: post #6

I feel like the iOS scroll bars fall into this a lot as well. They’re so hard to consistently get with you finger

My god... I've been using iOS for ten years and your comment just made me realize you can actually press onto and grab the razor-thin scrollbar that disappears about a second of idle time. What a farce.

The hit target is much bigger than the visual scrollbar. It is useful to drag the scrollbar for very long lists, but hardly the norm.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#86

Post by nine_k »

wilg wrote: post #81
nine_k wrote: post #59

The author sees half the problem and offers the worse half of a solution. A scrollbar is not only a control, it's also an indicator . It shows where your viewport is relative to the bigger view, e.g. a long list. Hiding scrollbars, like some [redacted] GUIs like macOS do, is just acutely impolite, much like making buttons indistinguishable from text, or putting light grey text on a light grey background. A solution e…

??? macOS (and iOS) is designed this way because of the gesture you want! You don't need the scrollbar because you have the gesture. If you want to see where you are in the page you just scroll a teeny bit. It works great, I haven't seen a scrollbar in years and its never a problem. Sure, some accessibility options are nice for some people.

A gesture is an action. It's good, and it works as intended.

A scrollbar is (also) an indication, glanceable, not requiring any action.

If someone among your friends and family has an iOS device, remember how many times you had to show them that certain screens can be scrolled down? Oh, not just down, but also to the right? There used to be a few perfectly aligned views that had no indication whatsoever that there's more to them is you scroll.

Narrow but visible scrollbars would solve this easily.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#87

Post by ryandrake »

I hate to be That Guy, but I wonder if there is any USA case history precedent where the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was used to successfully 'motivate' companies to fix inaccessible software? It seems like an obvious fit. Clearly, The Market is failing to adequately solve the problem.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#88

Post by f33d5173 »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
f33d5173 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :(

> so fuck me, I guess

Obviously not, but you also shouldn't expect the whole world to be designed around your needs. If you have difficulty using the expected input method, you should use alternatives with the same functionality, not expect others to redesign their apps in your preferred way.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#89

Post by _Microft »

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?

The web says that astigmatism leads to glowing, blurry text when it is shown white on dark. The iris narrowing in bright conditions seems to reduce the effect, while the widened iris in low light seems to worsen it.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#90

Post by wilg »

nine_k wrote: post #86
wilg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? macOS (and iOS) is designed this way because of the gesture you want! You don't need the scrollbar because you have the gesture. If you want to see where you are in the page you just scroll a teeny bit. It works great, I haven't seen a scrollbar in years and its never a problem. Sure, some accessibility options are nice for some people.

A gesture is an action . It's good, and it works as intended. A scrollbar is (also) an indication , glanceable, not requiring any action. If someone among your friends and family has an iOS device, remember how many times you had to show them that certain screens can be scrolled down? Oh, not just down, but also to the right? There used to be a few perfectly aligned views that had no indication whatsoever that there'…

I know what a gesture is.

> If someone among your friends and family has an iOS device, remember how many times you had to show them that certain screens can be scrolled down?

I don't know, zero? Maybe let's say once to be charitable.

This is not a real problem faced by most people. IMO, this is just people being used to doing it another way.

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