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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#481

Post by Dalewyn »

regularfry wrote: post #473
jacobgorm wrote: post #457

I agree the scrollbar is dying and becoming unusable. A scroll bar needs to be: - Wide, clearly visible and easy to hit. - Proportional sized, indicating how much of the document is currently in view. - Movable parts should have features indicating friction, as opposed to slippy-ness. - With arrow buttons, placed together instead of at opposing ends. - It should change colors to indicate hover and mouse press. Of the…

All of this, with the addition that you should have the option of panning in both dimensions from a single toolbar widget if the document supports it. I've seen that implemented but never with the arrow buttons together rather than at opposite ends. > - Wide, clearly visible and easy to hit. Way back in the day, there used to be a field of study called Human Computer Interaction, where people would learn about things…

The Windows Start button is/was placed in the bottom left so users could just flick the cursor to the bottom left corner, no need for precise motor control. Could be moved to the top left or right as desired, too.

All that went away with Windows 11, though thankfully someone clearly had enough power to say "You are taking my bottom left Start button over my dead body.".

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#482

Post by mgbmtl »

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).

Sometimes when using Wayland on my laptop, I have to switch back to X11 just because Wayland has no way of controlling the contrast.

(I tried searching a few times, no luck..)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#483

Post by reportgunner »

irrational wrote: post #70
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you find it hard to read?

Biology. I’m in my 50s and get an eye exam every year. According to my optometrist my prescription has been stable for about a decade, but I can definitely tell the difference. My eyes do not focus very fast anymore, my eyes do not adjust going from a light space to a dark space or vice versa very fast anymore. I now have to hold books and my phone away from me to bring them into focus. Same with white text on dark b…

What about yellow text on brown background like [0] ? I use this combo in my editor to avoid changing to light theme on bright days and dark theme at night.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/Ynvrm3p.png

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#484

Post by dredmorbius »

jwells89 wrote: post #68
hypercube33 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but it seems like color from icons has gone - now we get black and white ones. I'd get it if these companies making the UX were small, because yes its super hard to deal with accessibility and different color blindness but I agree - we've lost anything but the extremest of the extreme colors.

The ironic thing about icons losing their color and detail is that it happened right as high DPI displays began to become commonplace in consumer hardware. We have these amazing screens with barely visible pixels and excellent color reproduction being wasted on rendering monochrome lines.

There's also an increasing prevalence and popularity of e-ink displays. Though some of these are colour-capable, most are monochrome, and I've definitely had challenges negotiating apps and content which use colour as a key differentiator.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#485

Post by layer8 »

kibwen wrote: post #477
layer8 wrote: post #465

The general degradation of GUI usability over the past 10-15 years is honestly the most depressing development in computing. It’s a constant fight to keep things halfway usable, and it seems to be getting worse with each major (and sometimes minor) software update.

> the most depressing development in computing The really depressing thing is that GUI usability regression isn't the most depressing development in modern computing. Allow me to gesture broadly at literally everything.

Yeah, I have to disagree, I wrote this deliberately. I could live much better with the other developments if at least we had intuitive, consistent, efficient, native GUIs.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#486

Post by Findecanor »

alanbernstein wrote: post #373
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…

Not that you're wrong, but IMO the moving and resizing complaints are resolved by the Ubuntu behavior of (IIRC) alt-leftclick-drag and alt-middleclick-drag. It completely eliminates the need to find any special target within the window: just click anywhere inside it.

I have used that on my Linux PC running Window Maker, for decades. I learned about the shortcut in its config app.

But that is also yet another thing that wouldn't work with touch/pen-based interfaces, when your only keyboard is an on-screen keyboard.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#487

Post by reportgunner »

merelysounds wrote: post #437

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…

Do you not know about virtual desktops in VR that are already available?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#488

Post by reportgunner »

rendaw wrote: post #126

Scrollbars are terrible, but it's crazy that instead of improving them they just got rid of them, like saying "well let's pretend this problem doesn't exist". When you have a huge page, the drag island becomes miniscule. They at least set a minimum height for it, but you still need to carefully hunt for it. When you have a huge page, dragging the island jumps a huge amount, sometimes multiple pages. Scrolling gradual…

Why would you struggle with the scroll bar instead of using PgUp PgDn Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End ?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#489

Post by beowulfey »

ckyngcybra wrote: post #429
raspyberr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't actually use reason to understand modern UX/UI designers choices. I've just got Windows 11 at work. They've increased the blank space between all the items in the file exporer quite significantly. They clearly don't care about vertical space because I know have to scroll first in places I could click first before.

[flagged]

Feel free to enlighten all of us, instead of using ad hominem on this particular comment. I, a lowly uninformed user, would love to know what UX/UI is versus what it pretends to be, so that I might understand the decisions being made in Windows 11.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#490

Post by abofh »

hulitu wrote: post #358
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 are a lot brighter now aren't they. No. You just use them in the dark.

No. I suffer from an eye pigment issue, meaning bright actually hurts. Old screens don't hurt even on white. New screens physically hurt.

You, however, should stay in the dark.

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