Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Killed the Scrollbar?

ello.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 325 posts

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#231

Post by com2kid »

thrower123 wrote: post #224
pkamb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ribbon is great. At it's heart it's like a menu and toolbar, but with big recognizable icons, differently sized touch targets depending on importance, and always-on-screen familiarity. It would work really well as a "menu" for a touch-based OS, even.

No, I cannot disagree with this more strongly. There's nothing good about it that you couldn't do better with customizable toolbars before. If there are ways to customize it now, I'm not smart enough to do it anymore.

> If there are ways to customize it now, I'm not smart enough to do it anymore.

Right click, customize the ribbon. You can set it up however you want.

Or just set it to show only tabs and treat it like a fancy menu bar.

Or hide it completely and just use the command search feature Office apps have in them now. It is like a command line with amazing auto-complete. Alt-q to jump to search.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#232

Post by souprock »

There aren't even any scrollbars on Hacker News. There are no scrollbars anywhere.

Firefox may be to blame, but Ubuntu gets final responsibility. Firefox in Ubuntu 18 simply doesn't do scroll bars. In case it is an unexpected culprit, I switched to XFCE and then uninstalled a bunch of Unity stuff, but that shouldn't break Firefox.

Fix?

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#233

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #225
acqq wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just seen the new Microsoft Office. On the desktop. With a big screen. But just pressing the File menu makes the document you work on completely disappear behind something useless. I've tried Word and Excel, both behaved so. Insane!

> I've just seen the new Microsoft Office. On the desktop. With a big screen. But just pressing the File menu makes the document you work on completely disappear behind something useless. That's been the case for I think a decade now. Maybe longer. To be fair, now days they make really good use of that space. Earlier iterations of that UI were pretty bad, but a giant list of recent documents, a list of recent documen…

[deleted]

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#234

Post by recursive »

souprock wrote: post #232

There aren't even any scrollbars on Hacker News. There are no scrollbars anywhere. Firefox may be to blame, but Ubuntu gets final responsibility. Firefox in Ubuntu 18 simply doesn't do scroll bars. In case it is an unexpected culprit, I switched to XFCE and then uninstalled a bunch of Unity stuff, but that shouldn't break Firefox. Fix?

There are from where I'm sitting. I guess install Windows 10?

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#235

Post by webreac »

novok wrote: post #188

The reason why scrollbars are not a first class UI widget in mobile UIs is because they are finger based, which means every manipulable widget needs to be finger sized. Making scroll bars finger sized takes up way too much screen space in mobile UI, so they were regulated to a passive progress bar indicator and the scrollbar actions were moved into swipe gestures instead. With that change you lose the ability to prec…

I work on a desktop. Often a 40" display, in fullscreen. The thin scrollbar is really painfull to use.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#236

Post by kps »

antod wrote: post #211
officeplant wrote: post #180

Who needs scrollbars when I've got my trusty PgUp & PgDn

Lucky you. I'm noticing an increasingly shrinking ability for them to their intended job lately. Sigh

Many sites just don't bother to assign focus to the main content region. (I don't think they even realize they're doing it wrong.) Page up/down work if you first mouse-click there, assuming you can find a place to do that without the page hijacking it.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#237

Post by catalogia »

rb808 wrote: post #50
buboard wrote: post #3

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…

But our A/B testing shows a 5% increase in engagement by making it crappy.

Meanwhile it seems like very few people in the industry actually understand statistics well enough to not shoot themselves in the foot. The number of times I've seen accidental p-hacking is absurd. Having to explain to people why they can't stop running a trial as soon as the numbers look good is like pulling teeth.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3204791

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#239

Post by sjy »

thrower123 wrote: post #93
mark-r wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you run into lots of desktop apps using a Ribbon style interface, other than Office? Microsoft didn't do themselves any favors by trying to patent the design and keep an iron fist on it.

I do see a lot of Windows software and utilities that have tried to copy it; there's a set of Telerik controls implementing most of the pattern. It's just unfortunate, because it started the trend of reducing and hiding functionality. With less examples of what high density software looked and worked like, people don't even know what they are missing. Then they briefly tried to push the one interface for every device…

How does the ribbon hide functionality compared to menus? I’m a big fan of it because it exposed functionality like styles, using large buttons that intuitively show how the function works, to people who were never going to independently discover them and customise their menu for easier access.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#240

Post by bllguo »

cally wrote: post #177
rhizome wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to conclude that they think (or hope) that everybody not using a phone is using a tablet.

Yeah, but surely the vast vast majority of dropbox's business has to come from PCs. Given how hard (and wrongly) they are pushing to be a collaborative space for work documents, I think I must be correct about this. I know it's cool and all to imagine everyone working on their phones, I just can't see that as a viable work process atm.

but who uses the desktop web interface? don't dropbox users use the desktop app?
Post reply on HN