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“We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

bugzilla.mozilla.org

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Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#41

Post by baby »

SwellJoe wrote: post #9

I was reading through this, just laughing and laughing at how ridiculous it was that people in 2001 thought changing the color of the scroll bar was somehow important or useful. I was all, "Hahah, people were very silly in 2001, and the web was a very silly place." Then, as the years crept ever forward, I began to realize this isn't a blast from the past...it's not like a discussion about the blink tag. It's a real t…

I'm surprised to see this point of view upvoted so much. If you browse the web through chrome you might not notice it because you can style the scrollbar in chrome.

But if you scroll the same websites in Firefox (which is my main browser), those will stand out. It's not only the scrollbar of the page, it's also any scrollbar that you can see inside a iframe or a textarea or really any divs with overflow:scroll;

If you think this is silly then you must think CSS and styling page is silly

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#42

Post by thristian »

scrollaway wrote: post #22
thristian wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any kind of power, including the ability to style buttons, text-areas or scroll-bars, can be abused. There's always some people that (quite reasonably) feel that widespread abuse of that power justifies withdrawing it, and some people that (quite reasonably) feel that the few really good uses outweigh the potential for abuse.

And what, exactly, is going to happen if people "abuse" scrollbar styling? Or button styling? Are we here to fight lame design fads by preventing people from building cool apps?

When I come to a website, it's usually because I want some particular piece of information (like movie times or ticket prices) or to have some particular interaction (to find new, interesting stories or to play a game). Good design (and good designers) keep that goal in mind, and support it by keeping distracting elements (possibly including weird, mis-styled scrollbars!) to a minimum, allowing me to focus.

Less-good designers just aim for making something more-or-less cohesive, and bad designers rarely aim higher than "something cool" whether or not it supports my goal. Mediocre and bad design hinders me from achieving my goal by hiding or obscuring basic tools of interaction like buttons or scroll-bars. Even good design can be a problem, if my goals do not align with what the designer had in mind (for example, the designer wants to make a good impression for first-time customers, but I'm trying to file a customer-support ticket).

I appreciate that many of the people commenting on that ticket are just trying to make the world a more pleasant place, but some times I wish browsers had a button that would blast away all the custom styling of a page and just display the content in a standardised fashion (like the Reader mode many browsers have, but not just limited to long-form articles).

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#43

Post by thefreeman »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #8
sergiotapia wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scroll bar is (or should be!) OS-controlled. Why give people the opportunity to muck up the scroll bar and add their crazy ideas. The browser belongs to the user, not the website.

I agree, and I personally really hate it when websites provide their own scrolling mechanism, as it usually doesn't support two-finger (mouse wheel) scroll, doesn't have acceleration, doesn't have my OS scroll speed, etc. IMO overriding scroll bars on your site / app is almost always a bad idea, as it leads to poor UX / usability. Edit: I'd also extend my opinion to cover things like a strip of items which must be sc…

you realize all the things you mentioned are only reimplemented in code due to the lack of native scrollbar styling, right?

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#44

Post by eru »

Swizec wrote: post #33
mynegation wrote: post #11

To the naysayers: styling scrollbars has a very valid use-case. Two IDEs that I use most at work are Visual Studio 2012 and JetBrains PyCharm. I always switch to the dark theme on both, and try to use dark styling whenever possible. Simply because the amount of light from two 24" displays can be overwhelming. Both IDEs style the scrollbars to conform to the dark theme. You cannot do that in browser, unless you resort…

> Simply because the amount of light from two 24" displays can be overwhelming. Have you ever tried f.lux? Or maybe monitors with variable brightness? (Apple's Thunderbolt displays have a light sensor and adjust automatically, probably others as well)

On Linux, you are looking for `redshift'.

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#45

Post by SwellJoe »

baby wrote: post #41
SwellJoe wrote: post #9

I was reading through this, just laughing and laughing at how ridiculous it was that people in 2001 thought changing the color of the scroll bar was somehow important or useful. I was all, "Hahah, people were very silly in 2001, and the web was a very silly place." Then, as the years crept ever forward, I began to realize this isn't a blast from the past...it's not like a discussion about the blink tag. It's a real t…

I'm surprised to see this point of view upvoted so much. If you browse the web through chrome you might not notice it because you can style the scrollbar in chrome. But if you scroll the same websites in Firefox (which is my main browser), those will stand out. It's not only the scrollbar of the page, it's also any scrollbar that you can see inside a iframe or a textarea or really any divs with overflow:scroll; If yo…

I think it has to do with my approach to the web, and my preferences for web design. I like minimalism, generally speaking, and I like consistency. I think Google UIs are fine. But, I don't use Chrome, so I don't know what the difference is. Maybe it would be amazing with custom-styled scrollbars. But, I'm content with them looking like my native OS scrollbars (I use Linux/Gnome 3, so they are grey, flat, and slim; quite unobtrusive on any page, whether light or dark).

I also tend to find most dark web designs (which is what a lot of these comments are talking about) just plain ugly. So, that's another factor. I've never made a dark website or web UI.

All of this is opinion, of course. My opinion should probably matter less than someone that really cares a lot about it.

I think it's silly because I think the way so many people approach web design is silly. Standardized UI components are not a bad thing. They are a very good thing. I like it when web pages look like they belong on my computer screen.

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#47

Post by radley »

derefr wrote: post #39
radley wrote: post #28

I think the simple solution is adding a "light/dark" setting for browsers. We certainly don't need every color of the rainbow (omg gross), but this simple option could be universal and solve most requests.

I don't think anyone who wants this wants to change the color. They want to change the shape (border-radius), or make the scrollbar "flat" (no 3D "groove" border), or translucent, or thinner, or etc. etc. etc.

A pro designer isn't going to ask for any of those things (but bad clients will). There's no reason to confuse users with unique UI designs per page. That's just bad UX.

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#48

Post by radley »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #34
mikelat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet, the browsers should easily be able to predict the dominant color of the page by parsing the CSS file and most of the DOM, and pick a complimentary scrollbar contrast accordingly. Maybe do that and allow override to light/dark.

Or, just allow the element to be styled like every other thing on the page. Because...why not again? Imaginary 4th wall that the bar is the only thing on the page that should not be stylable? So that it can match the scroll bars of native applications?

You think users want the browser window scroll to change color / shape / width per web page? Wouldn't that get confusing?

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#49

Post by radley »

radley wrote: post #28

I think the simple solution is adding a "light/dark" setting for browsers. We certainly don't need every color of the rainbow (omg gross), but this simple option could be universal and solve most requests.

The reason I said only light / dark is that it's easy for users to understand. Remember: these guys are asking to change the UI of the browser on a per web page basis. That kind of customization doesn't help anyone.

Re: “We would be willing to set up a $2,500 bounty to implement scrollbar styling”

#50

Post by jsprogrammer »

radley wrote: post #48
jsprogrammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just allow the element to be styled like every other thing on the page. Because...why not again? Imaginary 4th wall that the bar is the only thing on the page that should not be stylable? So that it can match the scroll bars of native applications?

You think users want the browser window scroll to change color / shape / width per web page ? Wouldn't that get confusing?

You think users want their browser text to change color / shape / width per web page?

Page scroll is not the only place scrollbars are useful. If you have an overflowing div in the middle of the page, a fat white/grey scrollbar is confusing.

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