Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 944 posts

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#771

Post by fuzztester »

rob74 wrote: post #348
MenhirMike wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was a fan of Google Desktop Search - that was actually able to find relevant content in my files, and it was fast . But Google killed it as soon as they decided to drive everyone into the cloud. Supposedly all major OSes have such an (indexed) search functionality integrated nowadays, but for some reason it doesn't really work, and I'm never motivated enough to find out how to fix it...

Same with Google Talk (as in, was good, then killed by Google). This is their text chat and voice chat app before crapware like Hangouts. Not tried Duo or Meet.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#772

Post by dredmorbius »

mort96 wrote: post #513
dredmorbius wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a wide range of e-ink tablets and displays available. Many of the tablets run Android and are largely the same as any other Android device. The displays can be used with any OS, obviously. There are also e-ink phones (smart and otherwise), watches, and other devices.

For text and graphics, you'd generally want to use a higher-quality, lower-refresh-rate mode. Which is to say that there's quite a bit of established UI/UX knowledge that wants a refresh. I've distilled a set of basic principles: persistence is free, pixels are cheap, paints are slow, colour is (mostly) nonexistent, and the more ambient light the better. Paginated-navigation (whole screen changes in one go), line-art, and dithered or halftoned images work relatively well, raster images not quite so much, though can be acceptable.

https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>

For a demonstration of a wide range of displays (the best ones are featured last) as of 2021, see: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KdrMjnYAap4>

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#773

Post by tomjakubowski »

expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

You're right that clicking and dragging the indicator part of the scroll bar to scroll around is silly and nobody really ever did it.

But the scroll bar isn't just for visualization and it was commonly used to jump around the page - you'd click in the "negative space" on the scroll bar, which would then scroll the page to that position.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#774

Post by fuzztester »

happymellon wrote: post #388
arcanemachiner wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt + click-and-drag solves that problem. Also I use i3 so my windows are tiled most of the time.

Having boarders that are bigger than 1px would solve that problem. Anything else is a work around poor UX. The fact that decades later it is still an issue is really disappointing.

>Having boarders that are bigger than 1px would solve that problem.

In a world without borders, there would be no problem of Gates.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#775

Post by pseudalopex »

lstamour wrote: post #515
pseudalopex wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

macOS cannot restore scroll bar width or buttons. The article documented the poor accessibility of options for GTK, Qt, and Firefox. It implied Chrome had none. Windows 11 is similar to Firefox. The GTK, Firefox, and Windows options are following the paths of previously removed options. And apps doing what they want was part of the article also.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#776

Post by pohuing »

deepspace wrote: post #767
expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

I am going to disagree strongly there. The alternative way to scroll is, in most cases, the mouse scroll wheel. And that gets tedious (and strenuous for some people) really fast when the document gets large. I absolutely need the ability to use the scroll bar to change my position in a document.

One Alternative would be autoscroll. Ie clicking with the middle mouse button and then moving the mouse up or down. The distance and direction between the click position and the cursor controls the scroll speed.

But it feels like this is primarily a windows thing for some reason. Firefox supports it cross platform but that's about it

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#777

Post by joseda-hg »

deepspace wrote: post #767
expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

I am going to disagree strongly there. The alternative way to scroll is, in most cases, the mouse scroll wheel. And that gets tedious (and strenuous for some people) really fast when the document gets large. I absolutely need the ability to use the scroll bar to change my position in a document.

I can't remember the last time I had to resort to manually scrolling by clicking the scrollbar

In order of use, I scroll one click, middle-click and drag (Best for constant movement), use the dedicated keys, use arrows, or use vimium bindings (Which I try to avoid, because I'd prefer to not get used to non-CUA keybindings on programs I might have to use in other computers)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#778

Post by tigen »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #773
expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

You're right that clicking and dragging the indicator part of the scroll bar to scroll around is silly and nobody really ever did it. But the scroll bar isn't just for visualization and it was commonly used to jump around the page - you'd click in the "negative space" on the scroll bar, which would then scroll the page to that position.

In days of yore, when scrollbars were fat and mice lacked wheels, we did indeed drag them.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#779

Post by IIsi50MHz »

masswerk wrote: post #743
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, it also turns a task that takes only one action (resize the window up or to the left from an edge or corner) into one that requires three or four (move window, resize window from bottom right corner, readjust window position). Hardly friendly, if you ask me.

I guess, it's a question of perspective. For me, maybe due to habit, these are two distinct actions: moving the origin and resizing the viewport. And I'm actually not comfortable with having to combine them in a single interaction. More often, I do not want to combine both, especially on a larger screen. Moving the viewport or its origin is a matter of the desktop metaphor, as well as altering stacking in the Z-order…

Possible meant: "Window's resize widget is outside the viewport, so have to first move the window by dragging the titlebar until the resize widget is accessible, then resize, then drag the titlebar again to approximately restore the window position".

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#780

Post by pseudalopex »

hulitu wrote: post #724
bonton89 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you not right click and enable menu bar to get the traditional menu (plus a title bar of sorts) back for this? I'm not really defending firefox UI to strongly here, I use it every day as my browser of choice and I find the defaults wonky but at least customizable.

Firefox is also highjacking the title bar.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
Post reply on HN