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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#191

Post by jorvi »

barrysteve wrote: post #165
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

It's more, there's no attempt to structure information anymore. All the settings menus are a nightmare of lists upon lists and each app has a completely random layout for it's menu-ing, often with links to external sites, for what could be set locally. It is geniunely confusing to try and understand the designers intent. I can never tell if I missed a setting, or if it was never meant to exist in this menu at all. Th…

This was one of the biggest powers of Mac OS X, before Electron became big.

Not many companies and people developed for Mac OS X, but the ones that did pretty strongly adhered to Apple’s design guidelines, partially because it just made dev live easier and partially because your application would stick out like a sore thumb if you didn’t.

At least the global menu still lives on macOS. I’m sad Gnome 3 didn’t pilfer it from Unity.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#192

Post by junon »

yen223 wrote: post #186
amanzi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time hearing the term a11y for me too. I hope to never come across it again.

It's interesting to me how almost nobody uses the ` ` (i18n, a11y, etc) convention anymore. I guess ubiquitous autocomplete has made that convention redundant.

i18n, s13y, a11y, o11y, k8s...

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#193

Post by MenhirMike »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

Windows 2000 was the last truly great Windows for me. It was the last Windows version that had a working "Find in File Contents" feature without having to install grepwin.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#194

Post by amber_glow »

Right on point. I don't want to play a sniper game when scrolling things. My hand was getting tired of just trying to grab a scrollbar with a mouse. I did the same thing some time ago, increased min width of GTK and Firefox scrollbars to like 32 or something, my life only got better after that.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#195

Post by masswerk »

jfim wrote: post #33
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 have come to a funny realisation recently. It's not my eyesight which is becoming worse, it's the UIs which are becoming worse. We've hit peak usability about twenty years ago, in the Windows 2000 era. The screenshot in the article is actually from about that era, it's one of the early 10.x (10.3 I believe) OS X releases.

Arguably, Snow Leopard was peak interaction design. Just for the highly functional visual grouping of elements. (MacOS has drifted off from this quite a distance, since.)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#196

Post by rr808 »

phkahler wrote: post #122
rr808 wrote: post #102

I was going to add to the complaints but realized I always scroll with touchpad or drag up/down on my phone. Maybe scroll bars are kind of obsolete except for visual clues.

>> Maybe scroll bars are kind of obsolete except for visual clues. On mobile maybe. On desktop absolutely not. And in that case it's detrimental for them to be small.

For my desktop I usually use the wheel.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#197

Post by lstamour »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

Everything old is new again? I remember when people were deriding Windows XP for being "Fisher-Price" in appearance and preferring to run Windows 2000 because it was more stable (until roughly SP2 came out, which basically was an entirely new OS released as a service pack).

Windows 7, which was Vista's equivalent to SP2 also has some fans. Heck, I'd even personally argue that Windows ME has some niceties not seen in subsequent releases, particularly when combined with Active Desktop (which I'm pretty sure did not survive the transition to XP).

I wonder if/when some subset of users will prefer a more controlled window layout engine, one which always opens windows into their own "space" on the screen. To that end, I don't actually mind how iPad does its window layout, I just wish iPad had all the features and openness of macOS to install your own drivers, background apps and virtual devices/mixing. A simpler UI can actually be a good thing, but you shouldn't lose functionality when making things simpler. A simpler UI doesn't necessarily mean less complex operating system...

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#198

Post by syldarion »

masswerk wrote: post #137

Regarding minimaps: I thought, these were great, too, but then I discovered that I find them rather irritating and that I actually don't use them. I guess, this is, because you have to maintain a mental mapping of that document and how it is organized, already, for the minimap to make sense. But, then, referring to that visual mapping of what you're already mapping in a much more abstract sense, seems – at least for…

Agreed. Once a file/page reaches a certain size, I find minimaps to be a mostly unintelligible blob. Maybe it'd be solved by just making it bigger, but then we push into the problems of screen real estate and what not.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#199

Post by addicted »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

I thought Windows 7 was pretty good.

Vista eliminated the Fisher Priceness of XP but added a whole bunch of glowing and reflective stuff, which Windows 7 toned down dramatically.

I don’t remember if Win 7 still allowed you to have the classic start menu, but I do believe I was ok with what it did have.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#200

Post by jeffparsons »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) I have also come to regard Windows XP as the pinnacle of personal computing UI. Almost everything that followed, regardless of vendor, feels like a step in the wrong direction.
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