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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

321–330 of 944 posts

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#321
post #99
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

... Ya know, I haven't thought about that before, but screens are a lot brighter now aren't they. I wonder how much of the dark mode thing is just that the old good defaults are now eye-burningly bright, so of course people don't like them as much.

Screens can get brighter now, but if your screen is too bright, that's entirely on you. Adjusting the brightness is trivial and you can even do it without using the buttons on the display (DDC/CI).

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#322
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…

> scroll wheels on a mouse But that breaks down if you have to scroll a very long way.

On windows at least the middle button could be used to anchor a virtual scroll wheel or whatever that feature was a called. I’ve used it quite often on large content with small windows.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#323
post #47

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.

And on the flip side, Chrome - just had the biggest laugh when I got to this point: "Imagine being able to configure anything useful in chrome ever." Overall, a very well written article - kudos to the author. (I've made the switch to FF again myself after Edge just got too annoying with their constant nagging about Bing search and other features. And the prompt to restore tabs. Just STFU and stop it already.)

Could you explain this point to me? I just checked and out of those two, it was _Firefox_ that has tiny, barely visible, vanishing scroll bars and _Chrome_ that has thick, well-visible, persistent ones. (And no, I didn't configure that on either)

The only thing that IMHO needs improvement in Chrome scroll bars is that the knob is light grey on lighter grey.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#324
post #81
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.

I use a mouse and a keyboard and an external monitor. Please don’t tell me about gestures since they’re absolutely useless to me.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#325

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 love oxygen theme. I was so glad to find out that it was still installable as an application style in KDE 5. I hope it still is in the next one

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#326

Add the newest Steam UI to the list of shame, not only for having skinny scrollbars, but also for having the 5px wide hitbox end several pixels short so that slamming the mouse against the right edge of the maximized window misses the scrollbar.

Actually, I don't really mind the scrollbar behavior in Steam, as the UNCHANGEABLE font size is so friggin tiny I can't see anything anyway (no, the "scale text" option does not fix this for me).

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#328
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 summariz…

It's so you can doomscroll for hours without realizing how much content you have consumed. It's pointless to know how much is left because the feed is infinite. You can't ever get to the bottom that a scroll bar would imply as new content is loaded.

It is an enabler of information overload, not a solution or respite.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#329

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?

Dark letters on white background are objectively more legible, there’s research on that - unless the screen is trying to burn a hole in your eyes.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#330

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…

seems like what all these issues have in common is when apps just go "fuck your configs, we want our app to look like/do this instead"

that last paragraph would really solve things, but also not being able to have that level of control does sorta suck for when you might really need it (and not just want to piss of the user lol)

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