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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

artemis.sh

921–930 of 944 posts

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#921
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open up two black terminal windows on Ubuntu that overlap and there is literally zero differentiation between the two.

Ok, but how is that an actual problem? You can use visual context to differentiate both windows, you’re not a visual AI. Also when does that happen that you have 2 terminals that overlap? I’d rather have my UIs be optimized for the 99% of usage, I don’t care if they lack affordances for cases that never happen in practice

You must be the UI designer then? Works for me, don't care if anyone else has issues?

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish telegram didn't have so much shady stuff under it. It's by far the nicest chat experience.

I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms (so sad we have to write this as there is no open federated standard *in widespread use* as with email), which are backed by megacorps famous for spying on users and selling it to whoever, and being digital goons of governments when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech. All are the same from my perspective, with UX being…

> I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms

The preferred channel for Russian warmongers, AIUI.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#923
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…

> 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, II…

> 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].

A pic of the old Windows 3.x Program Manager with its Program Groups within the Multiple Document Interface, linked somewhere in this thread, reminded me: Sub-windows within an MDI had a shorter bar for an icon, and IIRC you got the system menu (document menu?) for the focused one by pressing [Alt]-[hyphen] (or [Alt]-[minus]).

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#924

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. They're mandatory because they're the way to move the window with your mouse. So fucking them up with a bunch of stuff that hinders that is just as bad as not having them in the first place. Congratulations, you've circumvented the mandatory requirement! Which is just as bad as disregarding it in the first place.

Do you need the entire title bar for movement? I sure don't.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#925
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my desktop I usually use the wheel.

How do you scroll to the middle or end of an incredibly-long document? e.g., 200+ pages, if printed.

Actually I have a Logitech mx so can spin the wheel and it keeps going round for 10s+.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore.

> Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore. WTF are you on about?!? There still is! Source: Just clicked on the top-left icons on a few programs in Windows 10. Not guideline-defying shit like Microsoft Office / Outlook / Edge / Teams, of course, but programs that follow the Windows developer guidelines display the standard menu just like they've always done: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize,…

Because I haven't used windows in over 5 years. I apparently conflated the space bar icon being absent with the idea of the entire menu being gone.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#927
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.

[deleted]

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore. WTF are you on about?!? There still is! Source: Just clicked on the top-left icons on a few programs in Windows 10. Not guideline-defying shit like Microsoft Office / Outlook / Edge / Teams, of course, but programs that follow the Windows developer guidelines display the standard menu just like they've always done: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize,…

Because I haven't used windows in over 5 years. I apparently conflated the space bar icon being absent with the idea of the entire menu being gone.

Still quite a bit of time between "after win3.1" and "over 5 years". Like, almost thirty years now where that exact icon has, OK, "been absent" -- but replaced with other icons in the exact same spot. Did you never, even by mistake, click on one of those in all those over twenty years? Wow, you must be a lot better than I at mouse control. And / or a lot less curious.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But title bars are mandatory, so that's why not. They're mandatory because they're the way to move the window with your mouse. So fucking them up with a bunch of stuff that hinders that is just as bad as not having them in the first place. Congratulations, you've circumvented the mandatory requirement! Which is just as bad as disregarding it in the first place.

Do you need the entire title bar for movement? I sure don't.

https://imgur.com/a/dGwiRP5

That's a screenshot across the entire width (of the top) of my monitor, as you can see from NP++ being maximised behind MS Word. Pretty darn busy, isn't it?

Sure, I can clean it up quite a bit, I can find out how to customise that. But naive users? They'll probably freak out. (And, TBF, I just noticed you can grab on to at least some of those busy-looking fields and drag it. But I only noticed that just now, while futzing around to screenshot it. And again, would my Mom? Or yours?) No, on the whole: What large software providers do to the Windows ittle bar nowadays is shit. The larger, the shittier. So of course Microsoft itself is worst of them all.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be turned off, but it can't be turned off. It's still there, lurking just around the corner, and still showing up in some dialogs. And I think this is exactly what many people's complaints are in this thread: an interface that is faulty out of the box that needs to be "tuned" in order to change it from an entertainer back into a workstation. I haven't played with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in a while, but I r…

Lurking how? What dialogs? The article complained about things which were not configurable or not easily configurable. So did many comments. Judicious animation has well studied benefits. I do not see how Windows 98's icons were more attention grabbing. Gradient title bars help locate the buttons in my experience.

> Lurking how? What dialogs?

I do not use Windows 98 as my daily driver, and I can't give you precise examples.

But I know that many areas of the OS, such as parts of the Control Panel, like the Display control panel require, load into memory, and include IE modules.

> I do not see how Windows 98's icons were more attention grabbing. Gradient title bars help locate the buttons in my experience.

I hope you are aware that these are subjective.

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