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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#431

Post by iainmerrick »

callalex wrote: post #253
sreekotay wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OS do you think you were running in 1996?

Sorry, it was 1998. I’m pretty sure Mac OS 8 had drop shadows but even if it didn’t, I took that machine all the way to 10.4 and every version of OS X had drop shadows.

Classic Mac OS drop shadows were opaque, hence a lot cheaper.

I don't think OS X is a good example of your point because resizing windows was incredibly sluggish for a long time. I always figured it was somehow due to the combination of live resizing plus ubiquitous compositing, but I never understood why it was so slow.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#432

Post by marczellm »

rob74 wrote: post #348
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.

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...

I still have the installer lying around somewhere, do you need it? :)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#433

Post by einr »

pseudalopex wrote: post #223
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win95 default was peak Windows UI for me. It had proper shading so you can see the window edges. Min/max/close buttons were high contrast and easy to see, and were big enough to easily click. Window titles were high contrast and clear. The UI was light and snappy unlike XP’s.

What was worse in Windows 98? Or Windows 2000?

https://gekk.info/articles/images/explorer/98_explorer.png

All this crap to the left in Explorer windows that takes up space for no good reason. Active Desktop. Uglier icons that are inconsistent with the many older Win 95-style icons that remain everywhere in the OS. It's not that bad on the whole, and you can reverse most of it, but it's a bloating and bastardization of the (unironically) finely honed aesthetic of Win95.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#434

Post by Steve44 »

etrautmann wrote: post #171
masswerk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. This is what the resize box is/was for. (It's actually draggable edges with no "meat" to them, which introduce the conflict by overloading an element, which is also just a pixel wide.) *) The resize box used to sit below the very bottom of the vertical scrollbar, just below the down arrow button, as a distinct and dedicated ha…

Man it was maddening when the window was taller than the screen and you couldn’t access the one box in the bottom corner to resize it.

I have that quite often as I RDP in from various desktop sizes. You can bring up the Move command with Alt+SPACE then "M" and then use cur cursor keys to move the whole pane. That allows you to bring one of the corners into view so you can then drag it.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#435

Post by iainmerrick »

wilg wrote: post #233
kyleee wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t underestimate how much pulling the rug out from under people via constant UI churn negatively affects their lives and interactions with computers. Leads to lower confidence, helplessness, etc.

I mean it's been basically one change to the scrollbar in 40 years. And you can turn them on again if you care.

On macOS at least, it's not one change, it's at least four:

- scrollbars overlaying the content, rather than having dedicated space

- scrollbars that auto-hide when not in use

- scrollbars that are initially narrow, then widen when you mouse-over

- removal of the scroll buttons

That's not including the visual design changes, which are arguably important too (e.g. the scroll "thumb" now has a very flat design rather than textured so it looks draggable).

Edit to add: oh yeah, one more I forgot: in classic Mac OS the scroll thumb had a fixed size, now it reflects the size of the viewport. That one is a useful and positive change, though. Not sure where that innovation came from but it wasn't the Mac.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#436

Post by Fluorescence »

shiroiuma wrote: post #375
nerdponx wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but in hindsight endearingly so. And the UX itself was still really good. The start menu in particular was an actual improvement over the old one, as were the clickable login screen icons.

The usability was very good. The appearance was goofy and Fisher-Price-like. The two things are mostly orthogonal.

I wouldn't say orthogonal. Making something inviting, approachable and feel like a safe place to experiment/explore for a novice is a critical and overlooked part of usability. The childlike choices of "bright primary colours" and "no sharp edges" is one way to attempt that.

It's what the general public needs that us nerds can least relate to.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#437

Post by merelysounds »

I wonder how that might work in a virtual environment. Scrollbars are about overflow of content for a given screen+window size; with AR/VR in a way we're working without any screen size, so this UX could take some different form.

For example, Apple's TouchBar - a separate screen - in my opinion offered good scrolling UX and often with minimap support too. I'd like to see an extension of that, i.e. a large unified VR scrollbar.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#438

Post by albert_e »

rob74 wrote: post #348
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.

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...

May be they are so busy figuring out how to upload our data to their servers and sneak in clauses in their terms and conditions to cover it ... that they forgot to build the actual functionality of showing search results to user.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#439

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

franga2000 wrote: post #321
Groxx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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).

On the contrary, some new monitors are so bright even on their lowest setting that you have to find alternative solutions.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#440

Post by DanielHB »

bayindirh wrote: post #430
DanielHB wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resizable windows are an outdated concept, full-screen applications with tiling capability (think emacs) are much better. Add multiple workspaces just as they are today and it is perfect. Unfortunately Windows and MacOS don't really support this kind of environment very well. Sure you can tile windows, but they are still windows. When you open an application it is not immediately tiled or opened in another workspace…

Everybody says "floating windows are dead", but I fail to get sold on the tiling concept. For people working on 3 windows, that may be acceptable, but if one's juggling 10 windows on a couple of desktops, things get hairy fast. Window resizing also helps a lot of things in terminal. Sometimes programs write log lines so long, I have to resize the terminal wider than the screen itself to make sure that every log is wr…

I am thinking that most of the time you want your applications full screen with tiling been an advanced user kind of thing

I myself mostly use MacOS without tilling, I just keep all my applications full screen and use multiple workspaces. I prefer to have a single big (32'' at the moment) monitor and just switch workspaces instead

But if MacOS had better tilling support I would probably use it more.

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