I wonder if part of this (the web part anyway) comes from a desire to monetize content paragraph-by-paragraph. With simple HTML scrolling (which browsers are really good at) it's hard to report what content is actually being read. With JS-controlled pseudo-scrolling, that's easy but it makes for a lousy UX.
Who Killed the Scrollbar?
151–160 of 325 posts
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#152I actually prefer the current scollbar situation. I HATE when people hijack it but I prefer it to disappear when I don't need it. I can always scroll a tiny amount (magic mouse) to see my progress. I really do like the clearer look to UI's without the bar. > No flipping clue how long the flipping post flipping is. > No flipping way to quickly navigate to the top or bottom of the post. I've literally never had either…
For smaller screens, scrollbar-on-scroll (with a slow fade of 0.5 - 2s or so) would be a reasonable compromise, if the scrollbar were also a manipulation interface, and not merely informational.
The default Android PDF viewer operates in this manner, and provides a grabbable scroll control. Much of the rest of the app is otherwise less than impressive, but this would be a useful motif to pick up.
I'd offered the feedback to Ello in the piece as both relevant to the site specifically, and in the spirit of having long offered feedback on both good and bad elements of the site, at least for as long as there was any response to those (this stopped being the case around 2016, the site is now effectively dead).
I am a firm believer in the right to provide feedback on tools and services used. "Go self host" isn't a reasonable or scalable response generally.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#153I wonder if part of this (the web part anyway) comes from a desire to monetize content paragraph-by-paragraph. With simple HTML scrolling (which browsers are really good at) it's hard to report what content is actually being read. With JS-controlled pseudo-scrolling, that's easy but it makes for a lousy UX.
That tends to result in highly-paginated articles. In the worst cases, approaching paragraph-by-paragraph "slideshows" or pagination. An extreme anti-pattern.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#154I'm old enough that I started out building desktop apps with native widgets. You had consistent, easy to use UIs, and they were pretty much the same no matter what application you where in. Building the UI was considered they easy part. You could even draw the thing with drawing tools! Since the native widgets were designed by people who spend all day thinking about UI, user testing UI, etc everything pretty much jus…
There are any number of Web design failures which are traceable to either bad defaults or missing basic functionality. Standardisation on more of these elements, and maybe bisecting or further splitting current browser roles to (principally) textual content, commerce, multimedia, and applications, rather than cramming all four roles (poorly) into a single app, might help.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#155> 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…
>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. It's inconsistent on android, it works like that with most things but strangely not with some apps. You can't grab the scrollbar in Retroarch for example, even though you can see it. It makes scrolling through huge lists of ROMs extremely aggravating.
> It's inconsistent on android
Inconsistency in Android is one of its selling features if you are in to that.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh you're right. Interesting. My browser is 1134x1080. I guess maybe in today's world of super high res phones that could be considered a "mobile display".
I don't really understand what's wrong with a full-screen modal menu, or how that means "this is for mobile." It's true that it looks a bit stark on their homepage where there are only 2 links, but it's probably a fairly sensible extensible design that works well when there are many more links or things to see. It's fair to criticize specific visual and UX design details, but it's a bit much to take this as any indic…
Because I'm trying to read off some details on a document I have open on the side while interacting with the menu and then it goes full screen and obscures everything.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#157> 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…
Exactly right.
> Lord knows, you can't actually grab the scrollbar and navigate with the bloody thing.
I read those words while actually grabbing the scrollbar and navigating with the bloody thing.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#158I actually prefer the current scollbar situation. I HATE when people hijack it but I prefer it to disappear when I don't need it. I can always scroll a tiny amount (magic mouse) to see my progress. I really do like the clearer look to UI's without the bar. > No flipping clue how long the flipping post flipping is. > No flipping way to quickly navigate to the top or bottom of the post. I've literally never had either…
For smaller screens, scrollbar-on-scroll (with a slow fade of 0.5 - 2s or so) would be a reasonable compromise, if the scrollbar were also a manipulation interface, and not merely informational. The default Android PDF viewer operates in this manner, and provides a grabbable scroll control. Much of the rest of the app is otherwise less than impressive, but this would be a useful motif to pick up. I'd offered the feed…
> For smaller screens, scrollbar-on-scroll (with a slow fade of 0.5 - 2s or so) would be a reasonable compromise, if the scrollbar were also a manipulation interface, and not merely informational.
> The default Android PDF viewer operates in this manner, and provides a grabbable scroll control. Much of the rest of the app is otherwise less than impressive, but this would be a useful motif to pick up.
I wish I had an Android device laying around to test this on because I have a hard time believing any scroll-bar-manipulation-on-mobile would be anything but terribly finicky. That said I also don't find myself in a situation where I ever want to drag the scrollbar on mobile. I'm perfectly happy just using it as a progress bar.
> I am a firm believer in the right to provide feedback on tools and services used.
That was never in question.
> "Go self host" isn't a reasonable or scalable response generally.
Maybe "then host your own blog" wasn't the best way to phrase that, let me try again:
If you really hate the lack of scrollbars then there are a number of platforms (free, paid, hosted, self-hosted, the list goes on) you can move to that will give you the ability to turn on scrollbars.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incessant hamburgerization is something that I also find annoying. Any time I have to set up Firefox, the very first thing I do is enable the menu bar. My desktop isn't a tablet - stop trying to make it one!
I can see why they did it. Now that screens are ~universally 16:9, vertical space is at a premium. It would be nice if the hamburger menu actually replicated the same functionality though.
I think that if vertical space were indeed the reason, then we wouldn't have huge, touch-sized widgets everywhere and 32-pixel titlebars. There are applications where simply reducing the padding on most widgets to sane values wins you 3-4 menubars' worth of space.
I'm sure vertical space is the most often-repeated argument, but I'm skeptical that it's indeed the reason behind this trend.
Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always turn on the menu bar on the desktop. Screen real estate is valuable, but using some on a menu bar is a very worthwhile expenditure, in my opinion. I know about the "Alt" key, but I find the need to press that to pop up the menu to be incredibly annoying.
I'm super curious--how often do you actually use the menu and what do you use it for? I ask because I literally can't remember the last time I did in Firefox; everything's a keyboard shortcut. Fullscreen is F11, inspector is F12, refresh is F5 (even go-to-URL-bar is F6).
I pull down the History menu reasonably often. I'm one of the few people who still uses bookmarks too. I found that hitting alt was annoying and I'd forget about the menu and try to find stuff on the Hamburger menu instead and get annoyed.