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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#341

Post by wilg »

masswerk wrote: post #239
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.

What is the gesture for "let's go to page 196 of this 320 pages document"?

Scroll slightly to make the scroll bar appear and drag the handle or click in the bar where you want to go in the document.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#342

Post by t_mahmood »

AlexandrB wrote: post #250
pseudalopex wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows XP couldn't search the start menu.

That's why Launchy exists: http://www.launchy.net/ Incidentally, I still use it in Windows 10. Probably more out of habit than anything else.

Oh! Blast from the past! I loved this app, when I was a Windows user. The workflow is still with me, in a gnome extension.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#344

Post by sime2009 »

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 scrollbar is not only a control, it's also an indicator.

Thank you! finally someone understands what a scrollbar is for. It primary job is to show the user that the document is bigger than the window, and secondly, to show which part of the document is visible. Letting the user scroll around is not the primary function!

I was genuinely surprised when Apple started hiding scrollbars by default in macOS. Their UI designers clearly don't have a clue what the basic UI controls really do.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#345

Post by hulitu »

fijiaarone wrote: post #213
barrysteve wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Flash invented tiny scroll bars

That is not an excuse to use them.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#346

Post by t_mahmood »

xtracto wrote: post #320
Izkata wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC in that era, the leftmost part of the title bar could be clicked to get a menu of options that contained Minimize, Maximize, Move, Resize, Close, and maybe one or two others. If you chose Move or Resize, the mouse would change cursors and just moving the mouse would change the window, then you'd click to get out of it. I'm pretty sure this had a button there in like Windows 3.11 or 98, that I think was later hid…

You brought back a muscle memory I forgot I had: ALT+Space would activate the Control Menu [1] and then pressed down twice and enter to resize the window using the keyboard arrow keys. [1] http://the_messenger3.tripod.com/refwine1.html#ControlMenu Behold Ye Olde Intrrnet haha

I think you can use ALT + F6 to start resizing (On GNOME at least)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#347

Post by BLKNSLVR »

epistasis wrote: post #9

I run into so many websites that I think are completely broken because they have a scollable popover or some other weird element, but it's impossible to tell that there is content because the scroll bar is hidden on this small interior frame. Absolutely infuriating. I blame iOS and macOS for encouraging this insanity and starting the fashion trend, and tangentially whoever pushed along this whole "flat" UI trend that…

> UI designers have decided that mumbling is cool.

At risk of hijacking this complaint thread onto an even more inflammatory set of rails:

They may just be copying modern cinema. I can't watch many movies or TV shows these days without subtitles - even when the kids are quiet / sleeping / at school.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#348

Post by rob74 »

MenhirMike wrote: post #193
marcus_holmes wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was a fan of Google Desktop Search - that was actually able to find relevant content in my files, and it was fast. But Google killed it as soon as they decided to drive everyone into the cloud. Supposedly all major OSes have such an (indexed) search functionality integrated nowadays, but for some reason it doesn't really work, and I'm never motivated enough to find out how to fix it...

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#349

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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.

(For humour purposes only: Fuck me, I've been holding it wrong the whole time!)

On my desktops I've got more screen width than any of my open windows know what to do with, and they still want to skimp on scroll bar width. I can understand with mobile, but mobile design decisions are crowding out desktop usability. It's lazy and cheap but the market is monopolised enough that the approaching horizon can only look "no worse" at best.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#350

Post by Auracle »

Varriount wrote: post #313
MenhirMike wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is something that's always puzzled me - why is searching in Windows always so gosh darn slow? You'd think with an entire background service dedicated to file indexing, I'd be able to quickly find files in a directory tree with the word "foo" in their file name or contents, but even with a modern SSD it still takes at least a minute on any remotely populated directory.

It blows my mind that third party applications are better at search than the freaking OS.
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