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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#911

Post by CRConrad »

chankstein38 wrote: post #561
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.

I swear they actually are actively trying to make the "Control Panel" / system settings experience worse with each iteration for sure. 90% of 10 and 11's system settings feel like they just took the original Control Panel screen and hid it, exposed 2-3 of the least valuable options, and displayed them in a weird solid-colored screen. To me the only way to adjust most windows settings is to find the "Advanced settings…

Put a shortcut to

    C:\Windows\System32\control.exe
or

    C:\Windows\SysWOW64\control.exe
into your Start menu. HTH!

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#912

Post by DanielHB »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #573
chankstein38 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait how do you disable the panning effect? I hate that. I just want the workspace to switch I don't need the stupid visuals that just slow everything down.

System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce motion Still far from perfect, but better.

Hey thanks for the tip!

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#913

Post by CRConrad »

jeffparsons wrote: post #200
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.

I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) I have also come to regard Windows XP as the pinnacle of personal computing UI. Almost everything that followed, regardless of vendor, feels like a step in the wrong direction.

> I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.)

Muahaha... Heh. Please don't say stuff stuff like that, kid.

Because if you are "old", then... What are many of the rest of us, antique?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#914

Post by CRConrad »

dylan604 wrote: post #606
nerdponx wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most intensely 90s software aesthetic I have ever seen. Edit: Holy shit, Bryce! I think I had that on my family PC. We were really into Myst and Riven at the time and I guess someone thought it would be fun to try to make our own 3D worlds. It turns out that making digital art actually requires art skills and I don't think I ever created anything with it.

>It turns out that making digital art actually requires art skills it used to. now, you're only skills in art need to be to properly describe the scene and let some generative model do the work for you. i hope we continue to have distinctions made from digital art created by a generative model and not actually give the artist title to the people driving the prompts. to me, that's no different than me telling Bob Ross…

Let some degenerative model do the work...

There, FTFY.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#915

Post by CRConrad »

masswerk wrote: post #143
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

> it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. This is what the resize box is/was for. (It's actually draggable edges with no "meat" to them, which introduce the conflict by overloading an element, which is also just a pixel wide.) *) The resize box used to sit below the very bottom of the vertical scrollbar, just below the down arrow button, as a distinct and dedicated ha…

> *) The resize box used to sit below the very bottom of the vertical scrollbar, just below the down arrow button, as a distinct and dedicated handle for resizing windows.

At the intersection between the vertical and the horizontal scrollbar, if both were present. Or below them both, at the right end of the status bar, if the app has one (which many did, back in the day). Still there in f'rinstance Notepad++ 8.5.4, from June this year.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#916

Post by LeanderK »

Podgajski wrote: post #642
LeanderK wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling" by default, which is probably the most ridiculous setting. I have used MacOS every day for 10 years and i've never, except in exceptional circumstances, used the scrollbar to scroll. I don't see anybody in my circle using it. They all have the "Only Show When Scrolling" setting on. I don't think this is ridiculous and I would enable the setting if turned off by…

The scroll bar, for me at. least, is also used to gauge how far along in a document I am. So its use is more than just for moving. If I have to find out here I am in a document by scrolling that just means extra effort on my part.

it might be how you're using the computer. It shows by touching (not scrolling) the trackpad (and if I correctly remember also the magic mouse?).

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#917

Post by CRConrad »

Izkata wrote: post #256
etrautmann wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man it was maddening when the window was taller than the screen and you couldn’t access the one box in the bottom corner to resize it.

IIRC in that era, the leftmost part of the title bar could be clicked to get a menu of options that contained Minimize, Maximize, Move, Resize, Close, and maybe one or two others. If you chose Move or Resize, the mouse would change cursors and just moving the mouse would change the window, then you'd click to get out of it. I'm pretty sure this had a button there in like Windows 3.11 or 98, that I think was later hid…

> IIRC in that era, the leftmost part of the title bar could be clicked to get a menu of options that contained Minimize, Maximize, Move, Resize ... I'm pretty sure this had a button there in like Windows 3.11 or 98, that I think was later hidden so you'd just click the title bar to get it?

Still there, even in Windows10. (And AFAICR even W11; only used that a couple months last year.) It's called the System Menu, IIRC. If you see nothing to click, try pressing [Alt]-[Space] -- even MS Office apps, which have gotten rid of the icon, still pop up the menu.

> And in the Windows 3 era, it was an actual button (IIRC the minus on the left wasn't minimize, it was this menu,

I also called it "the big fat hyphen" when I first started using Windows 3, but AIUI now, that was actually supposed to be a picture of the space bar. As in, you know, [Alt]-[Space].

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#918

Post by CRConrad »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #359
Izkata wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC in that era, the leftmost part of the title bar could be clicked to get a menu of options that contained Minimize, Maximize, Move, Resize, Close, and maybe one or two others. If you chose Move or Resize, the mouse would change cursors and just moving the mouse would change the window, then you'd click to get out of it. I'm pretty sure this had a button there in like Windows 3.11 or 98, that I think was later hid…

In modern Windows 10, you still get that in well-designed applications. In poorly-designed applications (hate to throw shade at Firefox, but it is one), you may be able to still get that menu by hitting ALT+SPACE. It just pops out of nowhere because there's nowhere to click to get to it. ALT+SPACE, M, arrow keys is forever in my brain due to so many poorly behaved programs which would open their window somewhere off-…

> ALT+SPACE, M, arrow keys is forever in my brain due to so many poorly behaved programs which would open their window somewhere off-screen, and that was the way to move them back onto the screen.

Happens quite often with dialog boxes that pop up to inform you of some error. Particulalrly if you're working on multiple screens and have moved the application off your main one. (Which is what at least I tend to do when working on a laptop attached to one or more external screen/s.)

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#919

Post by CRConrad »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #259
masswerk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. This is what the resize box is/was for. (It's actually draggable edges with no "meat" to them, which introduce the conflict by overloading an element, which is also just a pixel wide.) *) The resize box used to sit below the very bottom of the vertical scrollbar, just below the down arrow button, as a distinct and dedicated ha…

That does make it easier to resize a window from the bottom left corner, which is indeed where you want to resize the window from in the majority of cases. However, if you want to resize the window from the top or from the left, that does not help you much.

> That does make it easier to resize a window from the bottom left corner, which is indeed where you want to resize the window from in the majority of cases.

ITYM bottom right, right?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#920

Post by dzonga »

xtracto wrote: post #317
Varriount wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that's always puzzled me - why is searching in Windows always so gosh darn slow? You'd think with an entire background service dedicated to file indexing, I'd be able to quickly find files in a directory tree with the word "foo" in their file name or contents, but even with a modern SSD it still takes at least a minute on any remotely populated directory.

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.

yep on linux have to use catfish file search
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