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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#111

Post by wruza »

Apple started the trend and the web picked it up. But as usual, web had no underlying mechanisms to retain the UX integrity.

Thin scrollbars work by being transparently overlaid over text and grow in size on hover, without bothering the main layout. Browsers can’t do that universally. So what you get is a windows/linux-style static scrollbar of an annoyingly small width. Or a js abomination that partially simulates it and stops working randomly on some mobile devices.

Sure, you may blame designers. But these original Apple scrollbars are actually fine and they look good. The problem is where it was for the last 20+ years: we are using slow and clumsy 40MLoCs as an applications and media platform. They need TENS of years to add support for primitive things like flexible boxing or grid layouts or linear layout constraints (oh wait, no). So there’s a chance we’ll get these overlay scrollbars in 2040+.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#112

Post by treyd »

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…

> It's blatant how UI designers don't give a damn about the users' needs, not even in FOSSland.

Especially with this new "don't theme my app" movement. It's really unfortunate. The issues with CSS stylesheets in GTK should be solved with replacing CSS with a better way to describe styles, not with just throwing it all away and not letting the user set their own themes.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#113

Post by epistasis »

nine_k wrote: post #80
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.

It does not look nicer. It looks more mysterious. Where in the list am I? Is there anything below to scroll to? Above? To the right, everyone's favorite? And no, trying to scroll every control just to find this out is not my ideal of usability and comfort.

In an age of information overload, perhaps the mystery is exactly what we need.

We know the exact temperature and humidity outside, we have logs of the exact times that our smart lights turned on and off. Our watches tell us our heart rate throughout the day and even its variability. Our phones monitor how much we use them, and in which apps, and report back weekly. When I had outlook in the office, it would summarize how much time I spent in meetings, seemingly to increase my stress level one more notch.

The lack of a scroll bar returns mystery, but even more, it brings us back to a simpler time when we weren't overloaded by information such as "how much is left of this text?" or "is there a button hidden somewhere on this page that allows me to complete my task, or is the app just broken?"

These are the sorts of small joys that we miss in the Information Age.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#114

Post by wkat4242 »

speeder wrote: post #69
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 s…

True. I use my screen with 0% brightness during the day and I have to reduce contrast during the night (which leads to reduced colour depth). Using dark mode is unavoidable for this reason.

Display manufacturers should really not just look at the maximum brightness but also the minimum.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#115

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

I've bookmarked this post and have had this frustration for a long time. I implemented the Firefox fixes and have a nice, rectangular scrollbar that my old eyes can actually see.

Only thing it took a while to figure out was setting the "Always On" part. I struggled to find that within Firefox and then realized it was an OS setting. I found it in Preferences on my Macbook and now, my FF life is markedly better.

Chalk me up as preferring the older 3D style interfaces with the skeuomorphic features. I have to use Windows 10 at work and the new flat interfaces with thin or invisible elements are hell.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#116

Post by autoexec »

codecutter wrote: post #108
autoexec wrote: post #20

Once again I have to give firefox credit for giving users the tools in about:config to disable this. It's cute fluff at best and annoying/abusive at worst. The browser's UI should more or less be fully off the table when it comes to what a website can change, and that includes scrollbars.

Honest question: Can you tell me how to increase the scrollbar size of Firefox browser on a Pop!_OS operating system?

Does the suggestion in the article not work? There are few options in about:config for scrollbars so I'd look at the others too. If that doesn't work I'd bet https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ has a solution.

edit: https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/15kk98z/how_can... looks promising

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#117

Post by [deleted] »

codecutter wrote: post #108
autoexec wrote: post #20

Once again I have to give firefox credit for giving users the tools in about:config to disable this. It's cute fluff at best and annoying/abusive at worst. The browser's UI should more or less be fully off the table when it comes to what a website can change, and that includes scrollbars.

Honest question: Can you tell me how to increase the scrollbar size of Firefox browser on a Pop!_OS operating system?

[deleted]

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#118

Post by gonzo41 »

treyd wrote: post #112
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…

> It's blatant how UI designers don't give a damn about the users' needs, not even in FOSSland. Especially with this new "don't theme my app" movement. It's really unfortunate. The issues with CSS stylesheets in GTK should be solved with replacing CSS with a better way to describe styles, not with just throwing it all away and not letting the user set their own themes.

There's also the consideration that a decent style sheet can be ~100 - 200 lines long. Yet I see ~5000 line css files that have so much custom formatting for JS frameworks that build everything with divs, rather than using semantic HTML5 which has accessibility baked in.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#119

Post by botanical »

I actually love having a small scrollbar. On Firefox, I have it as a tiny sliver that only shows up when scrolling.

  :root{
    scrollbar-width: thin;
  }
And:

  user_pref("widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style", 3);
  user_pref("ui.scrollbarDisplayOnMouseMove", 0);
in about:config

You can have minimaps enabled in Emacs and Firefox, but I don't see a use for them, to be honest.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#120

Post by Pannoniae »

treyd wrote: post #112
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…

> It's blatant how UI designers don't give a damn about the users' needs, not even in FOSSland. Especially with this new "don't theme my app" movement. It's really unfortunate. The issues with CSS stylesheets in GTK should be solved with replacing CSS with a better way to describe styles, not with just throwing it all away and not letting the user set their own themes.

Yup. GNOME/GTK is a lost cause in my eyes. Literally worse UX than Windows.

The developers basically say "fuck you" if your use case does not perfectly align with their "vision".

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