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Scrollbar Blindness

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#251

Post by derefr »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #191
derefr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's for shitty low-end laptops that still to this day have 1366x768 displays. We had scrollbars on 640x480 both ways and liked it. Even SGIs with 1280x1024 monitors had scrollbars, and it wasn't a burden that some folks today seem to think it was.

The UIs of the OSes designed in the 640x480 era used 8pt system fonts, and were very careful about "spending" vertical space. The UIs of the OSes of today are not optimized for the same scenarios.

Here's what Windows XP (not even really from the 640x480 era!) looks like on a modern display: https://ibb.co/W5mVgHT

You could fit a lot of Windows XP, and XP-era apps, on a 1366x768 display. You can't fit much of a modern OS+apps on one.

(That's honestly for the best; text and icons in modern OSes are both a lot more legible due to the increased fidelity and breathing room they have. But display resolutions have to keep up; and, at least for low-end PCs, they aren't.)

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#252

Post by WorldMaker »

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 have this complaint about iOS all the time that often the "clean look" in iOS leads to grids that exactly match the available viewport and without scrollbars you have no idea if there is more to scroll without idly swiping things around.

I notice that becomes something of a tic of iOS users, if you watch others, in that just about every new screen or panel there's often at least a squiggle of pushing the screen or panel around just to figure out the boundaries.

One of the things I thought was brilliant about early Windows 8-era "metro" design: it was the only era Windows briefly experimented with going scrollbar free (it went back to scrollbar "light" soon after) and when they did so they absolutely made sure that the application grids never lined up with viewport. If there was something to scroll, it would stick out a bit, always that little hint that there was something more further down or right.

It got some flak, especially from macOS design fans, for not being "clean enough", but you'd have apps with no visible scrollbar and you knew whether or not there was anything to scroll just looking at them. You didn't have to squiggle your finger around (or fiddle with the scroll wheel) to check.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#253

Post by chrismorgan »

nprz wrote: post #183

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…

`overflow: scroll` shows the scrollbars always, and should just about never be used. >99.99% of the time, you want `overflow: auto` instead, which only shows scrollbars if they will do anything.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#254

Post by saagarjha »

Vinnl wrote: post #209
hellofunk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

I think the corollary is "consider Ubuntu, but still don't skimp on hardware". Buy a proper laptop that ships with Ubuntu, buy a proper connector cable if you need one, etc.

I don't think paying more for hardware significantly changes the problem that was brought up.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#255

Post by markus_zhang »

On many Mobile Apps I also found that the scroll bar is just a small dot and it only appears when I do scroll a bit, so it's very difficult to see how much is left to read. This is particularly annoying because I have to scroll down to estimate how much is left and then scroll up back to where I was.

I have on idea what school of thought has brought forth the no-UI UI but I absolutely think they are idiots.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#256

Post by suresk »

baggy_trough wrote: post #187
reaperducer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one that always got me was the feature on OS X where if you move your mouse to another screen and move down, it moves the dock to that screen. It is possible to do without meaning to and it is fairly loose with how it determines that you've done that, and so the first year or so I had 2 monitors, I'd do it once or twice per month without realizing how it happened.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#257

Post by wtallis »

liability wrote: post #176
zeveb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I prefer good mice and good trackpads to poor mice and poor trackpads. But trackpads vs mice? Your comment insinuates a that a clear good/bad dichotomy exists here but I don't think that's generally the case. My above comment notes one context where I do believe that's true, but in the general case? For standard desktop interactions? I don't think mice are objectively better. If anything the proximity of a trackpad m…

I feel like a good touchpad (meaning Apple) is superior to most good mice for general desktop usage. What pushes touchpads clearly ahead is when you make good use of multi-touch gestures. Using third-party tools under macOS, about half of my most commonly used keyboard shortcuts can be replaced by gestures that are quicker and easier than reaching for the keyboard. The handful of apps with native multitouch and support for haptic feedback through the touchpad are also really nice.

I still use a mouse for gaming, but I have to replace it every ~3 years because the buttons start to wear out. That has yet to happen to one of my Apple touchpads.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#258

Post by dehrmann »

csours wrote: post #35
dgellow wrote: post #12

Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)! Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad. Example: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

See also, the middle mouse click and drag. Lots of 'fancy' sites break on that.

Middle click "open in new tab" breaks on lots of thing using fancy web frameworks because someone forgot to code-up support and thought "why bother with A tags. I can use divs and spans!"

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#259

Post by baggy_trough »

suresk wrote: post #256
baggy_trough wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one that always got me was the feature on OS X where if you move your mouse to another screen and move down, it moves the dock to that screen. It is possible to do without meaning to and it is fairly loose with how it determines that you've done that, and so the first year or so I had 2 monitors, I'd do it once or twice per month without realizing how it happened.

Ugh, that kind of thing is the worst!

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#260

Post by munchbunny »

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 openly admit it these days. If I had a VCR today I'd be the one struggling to figure out how to record something with it, even though as a kid I loved that stuff. And I'm only in my 30's. It's not really about whether I'm able to figure it out (if 8 year old me could figure it out, 30+ year old should be able to as well), it's about whether I have the patience for a badly designed UI.

One of the common responses I see when I complain about a bad UI is someone saying "no it's easy you just do ____". It's frustrating because that's not the point - the point is that I had to do research to find the answer!

There are cases, especially with specialized tools for complex tasks, where you are expected to spend time learning how to use the tool effectively. Photoshop is a great example. Vim is a great example. Figuring out stupid stuff like whether that grayish light blue vs dark gray fill on the checkbox means "enabled" or "disabled" is not an example.

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