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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#181

Post by hellofunk »

xur17 wrote: post #108
vbsteven wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the macOS monoculture is going to go away in the next few years because on one side macOS is becoming more and more developer hostile with each release and on the other side WSL (and WSL2) is improving the Windows developer experience a lot. I use Windows as my daily driver OS now for both native/web/mobile/devops work and I expect to see more and more developers making that same switch in the coming years.

For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

To suggest that “bug wise“ it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don’t have to worry about much if you’re using a Mac. I’m not gonna say that one of these is better than the other, but to suggest they have equivalency wrt common scenarios is a bit strange.

Also, Mac is a certified UNIX environment, it is native.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#182

Post by reaperducer »

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.

Especially with the usual screen ratios nowadays

My computer is an 11-inch MacBook Air.

That means that even if I run Safari full-screen, which is inconvenient, I have only 680 vertical pixels for content.

It's amazing how many web sites I run into that throw up fixed-position pop-ups that are bigger than that, and I can't close them or scroll to see their content because the designers or middle managers decided that every person on the planet is rocking a 27-inch 5K display.

Usually I just close the window and never visit the site again. If it's important, I break out the dev tools and start invoking display:none until I hit the right element.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#183

Post by nprz »

The reason `overflow: scroll` is a better default is the need to account for every screen size or possible dynamic content. If overflow is set to `hidden` or worse `visible` your UI is going to break on some screen sizes. So basically you need to decide if you want extra scroll bars for some screens, or broken UI when a user shrinks the browser. It's very time consuming to get everything right on every screen size on every browser on every OS.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#184

Post by bradstewart »

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.

Neither can I, actually. I work with my MacBook plugged into a large monitor with an external keyboard and mouse 99% of the time, and just assumed everyone else did as well without really thinking about it.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#185

Post by BruiseLee »

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!

Wow, thanks! I've been using "nuke anything" extension to manually remove this crap, but this solution looks much more convenient.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#186

Post by frereubu »

reaperducer wrote: post #163
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…

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features You don't even have to be elderly. The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears. How did that conversation go? Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go? Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or…

I couldn't agree more. I once had a really interesting conversation with an accessibility person who said in passing "accessibility is for everyone". He didn't make a big point of it, but it really stuck with me, and I'm always reminded of it when I see things like this. I've been working in the digital world since the late 90s, keep everything up to date, have a recent iPhone etc. etc. etc. and I'm stil occasionally stumped by things like how to turn on repeat in Apple Music on my phone.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#187

Post by baggy_trough »

reaperducer wrote: post #163
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…

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features You don't even have to be elderly. The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears. How did that conversation go? Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go? Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or…

Even worse than undiscoverable features are land mine features, where some subtle gesture triggers a wild and unwanted mode change. Extra credit if the mode change is hard to get out of.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#188

Post by Kalium »

sitkack wrote: post #132
ManskY wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please don't blame people for wanting when it is "the design" department that forces these changes on people. How about people (designers) start thinking about their users and some some strict adherence to someone else's opinion about Material Design. I hope we see Material Design like we see touch screens in vehicles. An embarrassing mistake at best and potentially fatal at worst. Design should always serve the user…

I think we may be seeing an organizational issue at work. The job of a design department is to produce design. If there isn't enough new stuff to design, they will redesign old stuff. This serves to advance the critical goal to the design department of justifying their continued existence.

The number of designers who will march up to their VP and boldly declare that all the company's apps are just fine and don't need any kind of redesigning is small.

You get a similar thing any time a development team runs out of feature work or actual stress points in an application they maintain. They wind up reworking the thing mainly to have something to do to justify the continued paychecks until the business thinks of an actual reason.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#189

Post by reaperducer »

IncRnd wrote: post #166
dmitriid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need is a round of testing for cross-browser compatibility. It's a pretty much solved problem by now, doesn't take that much time and can be automated. Please show me a solved automated test for the issue in the post.

There are several online cross-platform browser testing services. You don't even need a non-mac yourself. If the company is large enough to alwayus test locally, most modern testers will use VMs or some sort of containerization for repeatable determinism. This is absolutely a solved problem.

Online isn't real-life. You can test in a VM, but it will never be the same as testing on actual hardware.

Even my craptastic company gives me a bunch of devices to test on. And I very deliberately specify very low-end versions of the machines so that I can test against worst-case-scenarios. It's a bonus that sub-optimal hardware is cheap as chips.

My favorite testing device is a $20 burner phone I picked up in the supermarket checkout aisle. If the web site works on that piece of poo, it'll work on anything.

Right now I'm waiting for UPS to deliver an old iPad from Alaska that the IT department bought for me off of fleaBay, just so that I can test on sub-optimal actual hardware.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#190

Post by frereubu »

derefr wrote: post #165
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…

Scroll bars weren't really "hidden", though; they were obviated. At least on macOS, all the mouse-like input peripherals that Apple will sell you (both the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad), and all the inputs for their laptops, have two-finger "natural" scrolling. Apple seems to expect/assume that you've scrolled a touchscreen at some point in your life (in fact, many people have scrolled more touchscreens than deskto…

I think you're comparing apples and pears when you talk about Maps. There's a clear use case for scrollbars on vertical documents (i.e. most of them), and even when viewing something in an infinite scroll, so you know where you are when scrolling back up. (Although don't get me started on the UX of infinite scrolling!)

Edit: Thinking further about this, the affordance for maps is a change in the cursor to a grabbing hand. You have to learn that, but there's a clear visual difference in the cursor to show that something differnt happens there.

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