Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#1

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#2

Post by wmichelin » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

> It's not so bad on desktops, and I can restore it there anyway via CSS.

I wouldn't recommend trying to modify DOM elements via CSS or extensions if you can avoid it. You're going to run into some broken web experiences.

Regarding scrollbars, you can set your OS to always show them. As a web dev, I'm out here trying to advocate to never screw with scrollbars.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#3

Post by buboard » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

Flipping flip i agree! It's not just scrollbars. I hate the mobilification of everything. I hate that desktop designs are imitating the nonexistent information density of phones. Bring back menubars, and extensive left-hand hierarchies . Even in mobile, it's more practical for me. I like a full page where i can zoom in and out faster between its parts rather than scrolling up and down all the time (I browse reddit in old mode - it's just better)

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#4

Post by codeful » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

is it just me or anyone else? As soon as i open a page on desktop i always look at the scrollbar first.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#5

Post by ibero » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

This is a pretty fluff piece. There isn't really much explored here.

The only interesting idea I can write out is that the author says that knowing the length/size of an article/book is intrinsically good. I do wonder if that is necessarily true.

Maybe one can argue that knowing the length of a written word has resulted in less people engaging?

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#6

Post by wlesieutre » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

>2. No flipping way to quickly navigate to the top or bottom of the post.

I don't know what the state of this is on Android, but iOS 13 lets you grab the scrollbar and go immediately to wherever you want in a document.

The scrollbar doesn't show up by default, so it's a 2-step operation. Scroll a bit to make the scroll indicator appear, then grab it and scroll faster.

Works well but I doubt many people are aware of it yet. People just assume you can't grab the scroll indicator in iOS since Apple took that feature away when they first launched the iPhone. Scroll bar has been non-interactable for the last 12 years of their touch devices.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#7

Post by markus_zhang » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

Sometimes I scroll down articles quickly just to make the hidden scrollbar appears so that I can estimate the length. Very annoying.

However I do agree that removing scrollbars on Mobile has one advantage: I simply can't accidentally move to the bottom of the page, which (no idea why) I do it very often...

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#8

Post by buboard » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

codeful wrote: post #4

is it just me or anyone else? As soon as i open a page on desktop i always look at the scrollbar first.

all the time - to assess how long the text is and decide whether to read it

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#9

Post by Majestic121 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

wmichelin wrote: post #2

> It's not so bad on desktops, and I can restore it there anyway via CSS. I wouldn't recommend trying to modify DOM elements via CSS or extensions if you can avoid it. You're going to run into some broken web experiences. Regarding scrollbars, you can set your OS to always show them. As a web dev, I'm out here trying to advocate to never screw with scrollbars.

Having no scrollbar could be descrbied as a broken web experience in my opinion.

And I actually think that begin able to modify webpage to your liking is important, even if it means breaking the page in the process (I'm kind of used to it with umatrix)

I do agree that in an ideal world, every webpage would be an amazing web experience, but unfortunately that's not the case, even with big websites with amazing UX desginer

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#10

Post by city41 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

wmichelin wrote: post #2

> It's not so bad on desktops, and I can restore it there anyway via CSS. I wouldn't recommend trying to modify DOM elements via CSS or extensions if you can avoid it. You're going to run into some broken web experiences. Regarding scrollbars, you can set your OS to always show them. As a web dev, I'm out here trying to advocate to never screw with scrollbars.

OSX hiding scroll bars can be surprising for devs. You try your app on another OS and realize you’ve got several unintended scroll bars. I always turn them back on when working on OSX.