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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

751–760 of 944 posts

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft should just buy Everything off Voidtools because they have perfected Windows search and it boggles my mind that Microsoft can't recreate that.

> Microsoft should just buy Everything off Voidtools Don't give them ideas, they'd find some way to ruin it.

Azure Voidtools, powered by Cortana AI. Microsoft Account required for use.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

a) That scroll bar decision was made a long time ago

b) Problems with specific dialog boxes or dynamically created features is evidence of problems with those dialog boxes or dynamically created features. As someone who's worked both as a developer and a designer, often the engineers win.

c) Assuming that these topics are simple enough for off-the-cuff reckonin' to validate or invalidate them are exactly why the engineers shouldn't win when it comes to interface decisions.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. "Informs"?!? Deforms! WTF does phone usage have to do with sabotaging the UI on a computer???

Controls? Regardless of whether or not you like the changes, device usage changes the way people use other devices. What you deem "correct" is not the objective universal truth you think it is. Not knowing that is why almost all FOSS interfaces are an absolute dumpster fire.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. "Informs"?!? Deforms! WTF does phone usage have to do with sabotaging the UI on a computer???

Because designers and devs don't want to have to do multiple designs. Everyone's aiming for one design that works for everything. The problem is that such a thing is impossible.

Vollying back your flipness-- This sort of reductive assumption about software design is why companies that need people who aren't developers to actually use their products hire interface designers.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#755
post #102

I was going to add to the complaints but realized I always scroll with touchpad or drag up/down on my phone. Maybe scroll bars are kind of obsolete except for visual clues.

I also rarely click the scrollbar (except when "jumping to approximate absolute position" in a long document), however, I always look at it to get the current position/document length.

Therefore, my usual problem is terrible contrast of scrollbars. I have modified GTK and Qt themes to show dark blue slider on a light gray background, but only about half of the apps respect it.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#756
post #687
post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using dark themes whenever possible for a few years now, but recently realized much of unpleasantness of light mode comes for me from it being too blue w.r.t. the ambient lighting conditions. Playing with the slider in "Night Color" under KDE or "Night light" under Windows does the trick.

Or change your monitor's colour temperature setting. It probably defaults to 6500K, and you want something in the 5000K–6000K range.

But the SW sliders are much more convenient; say, at work the desirable blue light level varies quite a lot (e.g., a sunny afternoon with blinds half-closed vs. a rainy morning), and a smooth adjustment is very nice to have.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

A)Yes. I've been in the software business in some capacity for the better part of 25 years and software usability right now is miles beyond what it used to be. Thinking otherwise is a function of nostalgia.

B) if you're doing dev work, you're probably not entirely cognizant of how different your software selection and usage patterns are than most people's, even for non-dev things.

C) there's a whole lot of interfaces out there and the great ones work so naturally and intuitively that you don't even notice them. Those are the ones for which many assume the design decisions were so obvious that they didn't even need designers. That's so so not true.Look at the most popular user-facing software: web browsers are all obsessed with usability (mozilla actually does some of the best open usability research out there.) Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, et al... Incredibly clear and usable for their target market. Can't get much higher contrast than you do in email applications and other communication apps. There are tools to guage if your text color/background color/ and text size make for readable text according to the WCAG and I have never had a job, either as a designer or as a developer, where AA compliance wasn't a minimum for all functional elements. Most common user-facing interfaces that regularly use light or white text on colored backgrounds, like the iMessage interface or signal, benefit from OS-level accessibility enhancements like increased text size, which are very commonly used among the people who need them. My non-tech-savvy elderly relatives all knew about them through the setup process on their devices when they first bought them, and never looked back. Looking through every communication or other popular user-facing software package on my Galaxy U22 using a default theme shows nothing even remotely low-contrast.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Formal usability testing is still practiced in enterprise, military, and professional products. From what I've seen from colleagues in the consumer space they've predominantly switched to A/B testing and statistical clickstream/log analyses, though large companies sometimes still do run lab studies for important decisions and to rationalize the giant one-way mirror they installed.

It depends on how big/important/popular of a product you're talking about, but most software that your average joe uses (operating systems, native communication apps, national websites) likely either conduct significant usability testing or largely inform their designs using great usability testing from people like the mozilla foundation and the nielsen norman group. And no-- neither of those organizations have to be perfect for that to be a perfectly valid approach, and if you follow that guidance, you'll never end up with a 'very low contrast' interface.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time This does not excuse making terrible user experiences elsewhere.

I think you're missing the point. Usability is not prescriptive. You implement what your users have the easiest time using. Touch interfaces change how people interact with interfaces. If you care about usability, you work with people on that and not against them.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#760
post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. This blind appeal to authority shouldn't convince anyone.

If you've got an actual point to make instead of just poking at one little part of what I said, I'd respond.
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