Scrollbars are becoming a problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#821

Post by Groxx » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:24 AM UTC

vonjuice wrote: post #693

franga2000 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screens can get brighter now, but if your screen is too bright, that's entirely on you. Adjusting the brightness is trivial and you can even do it without using the buttons on the display (DDC/CI).

My phone's lowest brightness is way too high for night use (yes even with a blue light filter), it's super annoying.

Yeah - I'm glad Android finally has the "extra dim" mode to reduce that with oleds (only barely effective with LCDs), but it comes at the cost of awful contrast. Lower output is much better in comparison.

I like being able to see my phone in sunlight nowadays, but there have definitely been some tradeoffs.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#822

Post by Groxx » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:26 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #658

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that has always boggled my mind. >Gee, this stark white brightness is hurting my eyes, maybe I should turn down the brightness on my display... >Nah, I'll just demand every single company completely overhaul the CSS and contrast of everything while begrudgingly suffering the eye-burning whiteness of companies that haven't yet overhauled their CSS Like wtf?

If everyone would design against properly calibrated monitors it would be fine, you could just set it to the standard calibration, but they don't so there is no universally good brightness you'd never need to change for. It's like webpage sizes, if everyone built and tested their UIs at the standard physical screen scaling then you would run into a lot less variance in website sizes.

If everyone had calibrated monitors and every app and website was the same brightness, yes.

Instead, it varies wildly, often for good reasons... and then switching windows exposes you to extreme shifts. E.g. switch between photograph editing and a giant white text document, nothing's gonna save you then - stuff that looks correct and good for photography is absurd when most of your screen is the same as the sun.

Calibration is one thing, perceived brightness of the whole screen with specific content is another. And it's heavily influenced by how many nits are available.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#823

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:31 AM UTC

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…

And specifically addressing prevelance and popularity ... I'm mostly commenting based on my own perception. Looking for more solid data ...

... I'm having difficulty finding e-ink / electronic paper market research, though one hit suggests an 8.5% CAGR: https://dataintelo.com/report/global-e-ink-sales-market/>.

Using HN as a rough proxy, I see fairly substantial growth. Note that HN submissions overall have been fairly constant since 2012, per dang.

"e-ink"

"Electronic Paper" has minimal hits, though by years above: 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0, 1, 6, 1, 1, 0, 0, 8, 1.

"Digital paper" has an even smaller smattering of hits.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#824

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:43 AM UTC

david422 wrote: post #813

Dylan16807 wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "Yes, good idea." the response you're expecting? Because that's my response. But title bars are mandatory, so that's why not.

> But title bars are mandatory, so that's why not. What does that even mean? That's the whole point of the discussion - standard UI elements have been bastardized so much, might as well just keep the trend going.

Bastardized yes, but you can't truly get rid of it in all circumstances.

If there is a clean way to get rid of it, then sure that's a good option for some programs. (But there are a couple bits that you need to keep.)

But to ask "why even have it" is to fall into a discussion more about backwards compatibility than design.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#825

Post by xtracto » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:23 AM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #723

xtracto wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File search in graphical Linux is terrible as well. Just the other day i was trying to do sone simple file search in Mint and oh god the GUI search function is completely useless. I had to jump around installing 3 "file search" programs, none of them really worked and at the end I settled with some console bash magic. ... its 2023 people.

Locate works great.

How's its GUI? you know, because I was talking about GUI based file searching.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#826

Post by justsomehnguy » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:35 AM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #381

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That title bar thing, good god damn. I have to concentrate my vision on the title bar to place my fucking cursor between non-outlined active sections just to grab that motherfucker and shove it over. It is entirely a user experience regression. There's no benefit gained, whatsoever, from moving content to the title bar. Easily moving a window by dragging the title bar was something that "just worked" for at least two…

> 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…

> The one benefit I can see is to gain some extra vertical space on the skinny 16:9 screens

Only to waste it on the ridiculously big search ribbon. See the current Thunderbird.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#827

Post by iainmerrick » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:32 AM UTC

wilg wrote: post #711

iainmerrick wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On macOS at least, it's not one change, it's at least four: - scrollbars overlaying the content, rather than having dedicated space - scrollbars that auto-hide when not in use - scrollbars that are initially narrow, then widen when you mouse-over - removal of the scroll buttons That's not including the visual design changes, which are arguably important too (e.g. the scroll "thumb" now has a very flat design rather t…

That's all one change, because they redesigned it once! You can't just pick apart all the elements of the design to claim its multiple changes. I agree the proportional scrollbar was good.

I don’t have citations handy but I don’t think they changed it all at once. There might have a been a single major switch on macOS but I think all this stuff was developed incrementally on iOS.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#828

Post by quantified » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:32 AM UTC

cmiller1 wrote: post #796

quantified wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go with Win 7. Mac is all secret handshakes, nothing discoverable, terrible af keyboard-primary work. Windows was very good at letting you stay on the keyboard. In the spirit of scroll bar discussion, the standard of Ctrl-Home, Crtl-End, Shift-Ctrl-Home and Shift-Ctrl-End are so good. No such "begin of doc" and "end of doc" on a Mac except if an app wills it.

Cmd up or down arrow

Ok, except for default intellij key bindings, that works. Thank you.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#829

Post by steve1977 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 8:33 AM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #666

steve1977 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the smallest "skinny" 16:9 screens you see nowadays on desktops are 24". Windows was perfectly usable on 15" 4:3 screens. The first iMacs were 15" 4:3. So that as such probably wasn't the issue. http://www.displaywars.com/24-inch-16x9-vs-15-inch-4x3 What might be an issue though is the use of laptops.

Yeah, I was mostly thinking of laptops.

Ok I can see the point there, especially with the non-movable taskbar (and hideously large ribbon bars in Office etc.)

http://www.displaywars.com/15,4-inch-16x9-vs-15-inch-4x3

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#830

Post by layer8 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 8:39 AM UTC

theodric wrote: post #731

layer8 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> screens don't autoadjust their backlight CRT monitors had easy dials to quickly adjust brightness and contrast. You almost did it automatically without thinking when you had developed the motor memory. Nowadays monitor controls are often fiddly and awkward. But I still use them to adjust brightness to the environment.

There are some tools out there that will allow you to bind hotkeys (or at least provide a widget) to send brightness-adjustment commands via DDC/CI over the HDMI/DP cable to your desktop monitor. This may improve your UX. My 2015 and 2021 Dell monitors both support the functionality, with differing degrees of finesse. Non-exhaustive list: Linux: https://github.com/ddccontrol/ddccontrol || https://github.com/rockowitz…

Monitorian requires a subscription for hotkeys and CLI, unfortunately.

Twinkle Tray is an alternative: https://github.com/xanderfrangos/twinkle-tray