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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#111

Post by Aardwolf »

Spivak wrote: post #75
Aardwolf wrote: post #21

"introduced an enhanced scrollbar behavior that made scrollbars hidden by default" That's not enhanced at all, it's horrible, and scrollbars should be more contrastful and bigger again

But that’s silly when the preferred method of scrolling is a mouse wheel or a swipe nether actually require the scollbar as a touch/click target. The actual useful UI left is “does this thing scroll”, “where on the page am I”, and “the grab and flick” gesture on touch to scroll faster. In hindsight I think the mistake was having scrollbars be part of the document flow instead of hovering invisibly over the content un…

scrollbar gives visual information and allows me to scroll to whereever I want at the speed I want, scrollwheel only goes at fixed speed

I'm talking about desktop computers here by the way, althrough grabbing a scrollbar and going to wherever I want at any speed would be awesome on a phone too.

I mean such programs as Konsole, Firefox, and others, in Linux desktop. Scrollbars got thinner and with super low contrast there too

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#112

Post by The_rationalist »

soco wrote: post #95
supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

Especially with the usual screen ratios nowadays, their huge width goes unused 99% of the time anyway. So there's an only 1% incentive from usability side to remove the right vertical scrollbar... As a matter of fact, I actually use in my Firefox vertical tabs stacked left, to spare me some vertical space on the laptop screen.

It's not just about 1% of screenspace, it's about visual pollution that is distracting, it increase cognitive noise and cognitive noise is cancer

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#113

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

bradstewart wrote: post #88
newsbinator wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full stack dev, 8 ~ 12 hours a day on my 2015 MBP 13" touchpad. No regrets.

Interesting. Despite my efforts to consider that people have different preferences for almost everything in life, I am constantly surprised by my assumumptions about how other people do things that turn out to be very wrong. It didn't even occur to me that someone who uses a computer all day long would use a touchpad, even though millions of people own one, Apple continues making them bigger, and the only thing "wron…

You are not alone. I don't even consider buying any laptop other than a ThinkPad due to the lack of TrackPoint and being forced to use a touchpad if I don't have a mouse for some reason. I always make a mess with touchpads, including Mac and non-Mac ones.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#114

Post by site-packages1 »

supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

I've been super annoyed by trying to grab the scroll thing on the bar in a super long pdf. It keeps disappearing and on long PDFs where I want to scroll to, say, the middle, it disappears before I can precisely grab it. It's maddening sometimes.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#115

Post by jemorya »

scaryclam wrote: post #105
supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

Here's a link for something I use on such news and blog sites: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ I works a surprising amount of the time!

I use this every single day on my locked-down work laptop. It fixes so many sites! I recommend it as often as I can, and I'm surprised that its use is not more widespread.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#116

Post by ManskY »

supernova87a wrote: post #18

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem. For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when…

There has always been a struggle with UX design, people want simplicity but at the same time they want clarity and complexity of ideas. People want great knowledge, but they don't want to read about the nuances that makes it a great knowledge.

There are valid reasons for both sides of the equation, it is just difficult to find the balance to satisfied the myriad of different perspectives.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#117

Post by 52-6F-62 »

soco wrote: post #106
52-6F-62 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the larger touchpad rather than a mouse when working at my desk, and I have to say that's been a non-issue—for me anyway. A slight touch/movement on the pad and I know exactly where I am (and the device really is just great...). That said, the issues outlined in this article are glaring, and I do notice them when I switch to PC/Linux and a mouse and back. It's definitely something easy to forget, though. The UX…

I've hat as programmer many times this kind of discussion, about many features. And the lesson I learned goes like this: if somebody has an issue with something, it means they have an issue with something. Telling them "I don't have the issue" does not make their issue go away. In this particular case maybe they really want to see where they are just by looking - like the commenters above just said. That's pretty nat…

I'm not sure if you thought my comment was an argument or not—it wasn't.

I was adding another experience to the pile.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#118

Post by matthewheath »

Help Scout have this discoverability problem with dropdown menus - there's no scroll bar when the content overflows, so I had no idea there were more options until a colleague pointed it out.

I felt absolutely ridiculous and ashamed after that. So, I make a point of designing all my software with visible scroll bars and other visible features that a user could reasonably expect to find without having to hunt or guess.

Sure, it doesn't look as "pretty" but it's so much more useable.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#119

Post by zeveb »

liability wrote: post #91
bradstewart wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers (seemingly a lot of them?) use a touchpad as their primary input device on a regular basis? I guess this is an example of being in my own bubble, but I can't stand touchpads. I've used the touchpad on MacBook, like, twice in 2 years.

I would expect devs who use macbooks to generally use them the same way as the general population generally uses them. I can't think of a plausible reason to suspect that developers specifically might prefer traditional mice. One demographic I would expect traditional mouse usage from would be gamers. When I play a first person game I always use my trusty old intellimouse. Otherwise, I use the trackpad unless I'm sim…

> I can't think of a plausible reason to suspect that developers specifically might prefer traditional mice.

I imagine that developers would prefer mice if people who use computers intensively and knowledgeably prefer mice, and I suspect people who use computers intensively and knowledgeably do prefer mice, the same way that I believe we prefer good keyboards and good monitors.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#120

Post by 0xffff2 »

beojan wrote: post #109
jakub_g wrote: post #71

If you read between the lines, you should understand that the root cause of issue is the macOS developer monoculture. All you need is one Windows or Linux-based developer in your team to catch those kind of issues. But so many dev teams are macOS-only those days, whereas, apart from US and 2-3 other rich countries, 80%+ or even more of actual desktop users are Windows-based. (There are many other problems with macOS…

I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of US desktops were Windows. Their users are probably also less tech literate than the Mac users.

Funny. I wonder when this (perception?) shift occurred. 15 years ago, it was distinctly the perception that Mac users were the tech-illiterate ones. Have all the tech-illiterate users abandoned Apple, or have they just been drowned out by the bay area macOS dev culture?
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