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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#631

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

speeder wrote: post #69
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…

I don't use dark mode for contrast, I use because a lot of software "light mode" is just plain white. And screens been getting more and more powerful. Often using software without white mode the thing is so bright, that the walls near me get lighted up as if I was using a flashlight or something. Thus I have to make the screen less bright, but often this also make the screen colors and contrast get all screwy and I s…

> a lot of software "light mode" is just plain white. And screens been getting more and more powerful.

Yep. Without darkmode, my screens light up my neighbors fence like those Appalachian backyard streetlights.

( because powerpole streetlights were popular in rural backyards ref: https://assets.landandfarm.com/resizedimages/10000/0/h/80/1-... )

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#632

Post by JohnFen »

bluGill wrote: post #541
SkiFire13 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't theme my app" is not about users theming their apps, but instead against distros theming by default and more importantly the expectation that you could theme every app with a generic theme.

Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. Maybe distros are not doing a good job of this, but that is one thing they have the power to do. QT, GTK2, SDL, wxwidgets, and more toolkits I can't even think of should all fit together on my desktop and look the same. xfce, gnome, and kde all have some nice apps, they should m…

> Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same.

I would reject a distro that did this (unless I could disable it). But users should be able to make everything look the way that works the best for them.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#633

Post by Wistar »

breakfastduck wrote: post #586
pjettter wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wish we had more analog control in the digital world. I wish there were turn knobs instead up/down buttons with 10 steps (where it is easy to accidentally leave a menu... When trying to get back to where you were, you are suddenly adjusting something else entirely). Manual control with digital devices has become too digital and too cumbersome. It used to be easy to adjust contrast and brightness on a display,…

Most plugins used in music software do take that approach. Where the plugin interfaces are modelled to look 'like hardware' in most cases, with nobs, sliders, all the things you'd expect on a hardware compressor / synth etc. I like it.

The dressing up of digital controls to mimic analog controls is called skeuomorphic although I have not encountered the term in a long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#634

Post by JohnFen »

agloe_dreams wrote: post #574
jfim wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. We've hit peak usability about twenty years ago, in the Windows 2000 era. The screenshot in the article is actually from about that era, it's one of the early 10.x (10.3 I believe) OS X releases.

Today in HN: A billion armchair rants about Windows 2000 being the best UI forgetting just how much it actually sucked at usability or accessibility features.

It's possible that people remember how much it sucked, but they also recognize that the UI sucks even more now.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#635

Post by JohnFen »

bluGill wrote: post #544
bee_rider wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised Linux doesn’t have some ubiquitous “use the camera to do auto-brightness” option (pinging the camera on a proprietary OS would be creepy, but if it is open source…).

I know a lot of people who have covered their camera with tape. Some laptops even come with a physical shutter. This is something company policy often recommends - if the camera is physically covered an attacker can't see the next product we are working on.

When I buy a laptop, one of the things I'm looking for is that it doesn't have an integrated camera at all. It's happened sometimes that I can't find one, then I cover the camera with tape.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#636

Post by asoneth »

bluGill wrote: post #541
SkiFire13 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't theme my app" is not about users theming their apps, but instead against distros theming by default and more importantly the expectation that you could theme every app with a generic theme.

Distros SHOULD be theming all applications. Once thing a distro can do well is create a theme for their distro so everything looks the same. Maybe distros are not doing a good job of this, but that is one thing they have the power to do. QT, GTK2, SDL, wxwidgets, and more toolkits I can't even think of should all fit together on my desktop and look the same. xfce, gnome, and kde all have some nice apps, they should m…

I would also like to live in a world where it is easy for end-users and distros to theme apps. But with current technologies and cultural expectations this results in an untenable testing and support burden on app developers.

We could shift cultural expectations so that distro maintainers become the first tier of support for all app issues in their distro, and escalate issues to app developers if and only if they've confirmed that the issue is distro-agnostic. That would be sustainable for app developers but could be a heavy burden for small distro teams.

> This is a HARD problem, but that isn't an excuse to not face it.

Agreed, I just don't think it's the responsibility of app developers to solve.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#637

Post by JohnFen »

shiroiuma wrote: post #415
Gualdrapo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I just love about KDE is that when you right-click on an "empty" area of a scrollbar, it offers you options to go to the very top or the very bottom of whatever view you're seeing. I seem to recall that something like QtCurve offered buttons to do that within the scrollbar. If only everyone did that, many time wasted in scrolling would be saved and "go to the top" buttons in websites wouldn't exist

That sounds nice, but I'm using KDE right now and just tried it on several apps and it doesn't work. In Chrome, it just brings up the regular right-click menu the browser normally provides. In actual KDE apps, it does nothing.

It didn't work for me either.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#638

Post by barrysteve »

Izkata wrote: post #569
barrysteve wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah English needs another vocab grouping. Greek, Latin and .

The word you're looking for is "jargon". It refers to niche-specific words that are hard for outsiders to understand, and isn't just tech-specific. "Lingo" is a much broader term.

True. I was grasping at straws for the right word. Thank you.

The Greek/Latin/ structure should be standard or taught in schools in some capacity.

Basic programming concepts are popular, useful and should probably be taught as a sub category of English... given that programming is supposed to be a language, and pull its roots (somewhat) from English or "natural language".

Society would produce higher quality code if the basic concepts were considered as a literacy requirement for children.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#639

Post by ang_cire »

pjettter wrote: post #578
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…

I often wish we had more analog control in the digital world. I wish there were turn knobs instead up/down buttons with 10 steps (where it is easy to accidentally leave a menu... When trying to get back to where you were, you are suddenly adjusting something else entirely). Manual control with digital devices has become too digital and too cumbersome. It used to be easy to adjust contrast and brightness on a display,…

This is actually one of the things I love about my Mini Cooper; they have cool physical toggle switches that feel like you're in a cockpit instead of the all-digital interfaces that feel like a coffee bar.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#640

Post by Wistar »

sojournerc wrote: post #605
breakfastduck wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most plugins used in music software do take that approach. Where the plugin interfaces are modelled to look 'like hardware' in most cases, with nobs, sliders, all the things you'd expect on a hardware compressor / synth etc. I like it.

Even better, I connect a midi keyboard so I can use its knobs and faders to manipulate the plugins. Much better feel, and for something like eq, it's nice to be able to manipulate multiple things at once

“…it's nice to be able to manipulate multiple things at once.”

Particularly if one thing affects another in a ripple-effect or chain reaction. It is great to be able to adjust at least two values at once. Keeps you from going back-and-forth adjusting in ever smaller increments to get to the settings you want.

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