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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#511

Post by chefandy »

Podgajski wrote: post #476
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…

If we are talking UI we need to talk about Apple. The first thin I do on MacOS is turn on the scroll bars. Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling" by default, which is probably the most ridiculous setting.

It seems like most people who scroll use touch, wheel, or other non-scroll-bar interfaces, and the scroll bars are just a visual indicator of document size and position while navigating it. I know I do— and have for 20 years unless I was using a shitty laptop without a scrolling input method. Maybe unless I'm scrolling through literally millions of lines of text, which is infrequent enough that I'd prefer to have them hidden and revealable by scrolling a bit.

Not having them take up screen real estate and working with most people's usage styles while being configurable for others is the right decision. The problem is systems and applications that don't let you configure them.

People talk about accessibility and their preferences like they are absolute truths— it's a lot more complex. Not having scroll bars sucks for people that never got comfortable with other scrolling input methods and people who use sight interfaces, for example. They couldn't possibly be less relevant to people who use screen readers, and as an input method rather than an Univision visual indicator, only slightly more relevant to people on phones and tablets. Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. Adding visible UI elements adds cognitive load, and for people who never worked with scroll bars out of necessity, they're just another bulky animated distraction on the screen. Most younger users would probably think them about as useful as an always-visible on-screen keyboard.

I guarantee you— the designers at Apple who chose to hide those scroll bars probably thought more about scrolling more than every one of these commenters combined, and that was before they did formal usability studies.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#512

Post by c-linkage »

f33d5173 wrote: post #88
ryandrake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article says, not everyone can use a scroll wheel, and not everyone even has a scroll wheel or touchpad. I personally find using mouse scroll wheels quite painful due to RSI caused from decades of mouse abuse. Yet, designers find scroll bars and up-and-down scroll arrows icky so fuck me, I guess. :(

> so fuck me, I guess Obviously not, but you also shouldn't expect the whole world to be designed around your needs. If you have difficulty using the expected input method, you should use alternatives with the same functionality, not expect others to redesign their apps in your preferred way.

I guess we don't need ramps because everyone has feet.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#513

Post by mort96 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #484
jwells89 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there actually an increasing prevalence and popularity of e-ink displays? I know there technically exists some "high refresh rate" e-ink screens these days (meaning you can get 10 FPS if you're comfortable with a whole lot of ghosting), but aren't e-ink screens still pretty much only used in dedicated e-book readers?

Personally, I think it's just that monochrome icons are fashionable. I can't imagine that the GIMP developers for example chose to make GIMP's icons monochrome because that works better on e-ink screens.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#514

Post by mort96 »

shiroiuma wrote: post #402
masklinn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monochrome lines are cool tho, ink or charcoal can be gorgeous, and “barely visible pixels” are genuinely needed to get them. That aside, high dpi displays are still a rare sight on desktops, there’s not many of them and the aspect ratios and ancillary features are extremely limited.

>That aside, high dpi displays are still a rare sight on desktops No, they aren't. ALL displays these days are high-dpi, when you compare to the 640x480 and 800x600 screens that were normal in the late 1990s. But the window managers back then were FAR better (in functionality and appearance) than what most of us use today.

In modern parlance, "high-DPI" or "HiDPI" does not refer to your 24" 1080p screen. That's solidly a "low-DPI" screen; it's perfectly usable with UI elements rendered at "1x".

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#515

Post by lstamour »

pseudalopex wrote: post #242
lstamour wrote: post #217

For those looking to accessibly scroll webpages: if not visually impaired, could I introduce you to the powerful combination of hitting spacebar to scroll down webpages and (in Firefox, at least) hitting the / (forward slash) key to bring up the "quick search" window? From there, you can type in whatever you want to select or bring into focus that you see on the screen. It's a great way to quickly move the focus to a…

Could I introduce you to space bar typing space or pressing a button instead? Could I introduce you to someone who uses eye tracking and voice control not having the keyboard dexterity you assumed?

Sorry if it came across that way, everyone’s needs are different. As far as I know both Mac and Windows have preferences to make scrollbars permanent and/or giant, though not every app is as accessible, and webpages can, of course, do whatever they want to some extent. You could probably find a browser and OS combination that is completely customizable to suit, though.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#516

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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]

Is this a "no real Scotsman" defense of the UI/UX industry becoming subordinate to Marketing Departments?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#517

Post by NekkoDroid »

raspyberr wrote: post #399
vladvasiliu wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no benefit gained, whatsoever, from moving content to the title bar The one benefit I can see is to gain some extra vertical space on the skinny 16:9 screens, especially now that the task bar in windows 11 got thicker and can no longer be moved to a side. They, of course, still haven't gotten around to fixing the auto-hide behavior, so that's still not an option. The rare times I have to use windows, I use…

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.

Just so you know, you can disable that spacing in the file explorer: in the explorer -> View -> Show -> Compact view

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#518

Post by cabirum »

Umm, scrollbars nowadays are just to indicate something is scrollable. You almost never have to actually drag them.

Touch devices: swipe the content.

Laptops: touchpad two-finger swipe, hold middle button and use trackpoint

Desktops: mouse scroll wheel, pg-up/dn

What am I missing?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#519

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

DanielHB wrote: post #440
bayindirh wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I just keep all my applications full screen and use multiple workspaces

I also like this setup, but do you have a workaround for the godawful animation that MacOS uses when switching apps? I can disable the panning effect, but not the fading one.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#520

Post by thepra »

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…

You're right about the scrollbar contrast, even though I've customized the hell out of the scrollbar in my collAnon pwa I made the mistake to make it less contrasting for design appeal reasons alone. I guess that's gonna go in the next release
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