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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#521

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

cabirum wrote: post #518

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?

> Umm, scrollbars nowadays are just to indicate something is scrollable.

Which makes the often-default behaviour to autohide them all the more ridiculous!

> Touch devices: swipe the content.

Agreed; scrolling is one of the things that touch input just beats everything else at hands down.

> Laptops... Desktops...

Those still lack the 'click to move instantly to given point in document' functionality, right?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#522

Post by mort96 »

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 won't argue against Windows 2000's usability. But I will say that to me, as someone who first started using computers in the XP era, any Windows earlier than Windows 7 looks so god damn ugly to me, and Windows 2000 even more so than XP.

Interestingly though, I don't have the same impression when looking at the old Apple OSes. To me, Mac OS 9 looks old, but not ugly.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#523

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

donatj wrote: post #160
autoexec wrote: post #20

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.

> 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. I have a very strong recollection of adamantly defending IE6's ability to style scroll bars on forums in the early 2000s, whereas the Mozilla crowd at the time called it an abomination. As an older man with both the power of hindsight and the weakness of failing sight, I can admit I…

If it were restricted just to style abominations, that would be one thing. It's the sites — and the libraries — that hijack the native behaviour, changing the speed / acceleration / easing of the scroll that are the really bad offenders.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#524

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

autoexec wrote: post #116
codecutter wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Can you tell me how to increase the scrollbar size of Firefox browser on a Pop!_OS operating system?

Does the suggestion in the article not work? There are few options in about:config for scrollbars so I'd look at the others too. If that doesn't work I'd bet https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ has a solution. edit: https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/15kk98z/how_can... looks promising

The suggestion in the article did not work for me — Firefox 118, MacOS Ventura.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#525

Post by lozenge »

chefandy wrote: post #511
Podgajski wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

The days of usability studies are long gone.* It's now change for the sake of change.

Spot the indication that not all settings sections are shown in this screenshot, in all display settings and lighting conditions that your device might be used in.

https://imgur.com/a/pMUKwjT

https://imgur.com/a/2ADNH2B

* Were they ever there? I can't believe this dialog background - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2001/10/macosx-10-1/4/ - was the "winner" in any usability study. This was removed in 2003-11 with the release of 10.3.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#526

Post by david422 »

fingerlocks wrote: post #268
rayiner wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Morons” is the right word. I don’t like to gratuitously shit on people doing their jobs. But what the hell? I can’t move a window anymore without clicking around like an idiot to figure out what’s part of the title bar and what’s a button. Every time I start “New Teams,” it asks me if I want to go back to Old Teams. If I open a PDF in New Teams from the file browser, it’s not obvious how to close the PDF without los…

Oh wow I thought the New Teams menu was an internal dog food thing for Microsoft employees. I’m so sorry, it’s absolutely maddening. Nobody likes Teams at Microsoft either, and many hours a week are wasted complaining about it.

I used to use Teams, and it had this feature where if you clicked on the app icon (macOs) enough times a debug menu appeared. It was clearly aimed for internal testing. But there was no timer attached to it, so if, over the course of your day, you clicked on it in the dock, eventually the menu appeared. It seemed pretty half baked to have a debug menu available to your users in the wild.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#527

Post by evrimoztamur »

CookiesOnMyDesk wrote: post #380
rayiner wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Morons” is the right word. I don’t like to gratuitously shit on people doing their jobs. But what the hell? I can’t move a window anymore without clicking around like an idiot to figure out what’s part of the title bar and what’s a button. Every time I start “New Teams,” it asks me if I want to go back to Old Teams. If I open a PDF in New Teams from the file browser, it’s not obvious how to close the PDF without los…

>Every time I start “New Teams,” it asks me if I want to go back to Old Teams Are you sure you’re not accidentally opening the old Teams application? When you update to new Teams it leaves the old version in place so you have both, and if you open Teams with the new shortcut/application you won’t get prompted to switch back.

I think this was a bug that lasted a couple weeks or so because I had the same exact issue: Open New Teams, get prompted to switch back each time, including the first run (!?)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#528

Post by kps »

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…

> Also, we wouldn't need "dark mode" or the such …

People with cataracts may benefit from dark mode. People with glaucoma or higher order aberrations (e.g. me) may benefit from light mode. Web sites should use `prefers-color-scheme`; native GUI programs should use the native equivalents (or default colours); command-line programs should not assume a particular background.

Edit: there's a comment chain that fell off the first page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37865396

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#529

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

sime2009 wrote: post #344
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 d…

Not just that "the document is bigger than the window" but the best scrollbars tell you, approximately, how tall the document is in relation to the window height! Proper scrollbars are, possibly, one of the best UI elements ever invented.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#530

Post by bluGill »

chefandy wrote: post #511
Podgajski wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Does anyone apply formal usability studies anymore? (not just do them - do they apply the results). I was trained in formal UX long ago, and many UIs today outright violate common rules we learned back then. High contrast was considered important for low vision users even if it looked ugly then. Now most UIs are lower contrast and while they look nicer, they are less usable.

Of course I learned long ago and so I'm willing to accept that what was best practices back then might be wrong given new research that I'm not aware of. However this seems unlikely.

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