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

261–270 of 325 posts

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#261

Post by pcwalton »

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…

I really dislike menu bars. Seas of text with tiny hit targets strike me as not usable at all, and studies have shown this.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#262

Post by nine_k »

genericone wrote: post #204
cally wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their loudest majority is probably mobile then.

Not necessarily a majority.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#263

Post by nine_k »

discreteevent wrote: post #208
jjoonathan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamburgers and Heiroglyphs, GUI of the future! At least Dropbox hasn't gone full in on the Heiroglyph side of the fad, they still have text labels for buttons, so you can understand what they do by looking at them and reading them.

The hieroglyphs are beyond me. It's literally making up your own alphabet not to mind language. Might be the ultimate sign of the over indulgence of developers/designers. Each gets their own perfect world which we must spend the time decrypting

Maybe they try to save on i18n.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#264

Post by coribuci »

novok wrote: post #202
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…

The vast majority of the world use mobile devices as their only computing device, and the office workers and power users such as us are minority users and thus get minority attention. I think something like iPad OS getting laptop features and everyone targeting one or two mobile OS targets will be the future in 10 years. It's like proliferation of electron apps, or how even the prosumer SLR / MILC camera market is dy…

> The vast majority of the world use mobile devices as their only computing device, and the office workers and power users such as us are minority users and thus get minority attention. I think something like iPad OS getting laptop features and everyone targeting one or two mobile OS targets will be the future in 10 years.

If you consider that a tablet is a "computing device" then my washing machine is also one.

> It's like proliferation of electron apps, or how even the prosumer SLR / MILC camera market is dying as smartphone cameras get better and better.

They get "better and better" because they are crap. As U2 said: even better than the real thing.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#265

Post by nine_k »

alxlaz wrote: post #159
sp332 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox in particular is themable; mine is pretty compact.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#266

Post by coribuci »

sjy wrote: post #239
thrower123 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> How does the ribbon hide functionality compared to menus?

Did you tried to use it ? For every god damn thing i try to find in the ribbon i lose 5 minutes. That's what i call "hiding functionality" .

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#267

Post by mark-r »

sjy wrote: post #239
thrower123 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ribbons aren't easily scannable, because the controls don't line up. Menus line up vertically, toolbars line up horizontally. Granted multi-level menus are evil because what you're looking for may be in a submenu.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#268

Post by redwall_hp »

bllguo wrote: post #240
cally wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some people use it by dropping files up to share with people, and don't use the syncing capabilities. It's a reasonably common use case, I've noticed.

Some people also use it like a USB dongle, and drop files up manually, then download them on computers they don't have installation privileges on.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#269

Post by romwell »

RaiseProfits wrote: post #100
mthoms wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, the point of a file hierarchy is that it should be well, a hierarchy. In other words each level should sub-divide your files into further obvious (whatever that means to you) subcategories.

Sure, but that doesn’t explain how you magically remember where you stored the file. I suppose it does help with making you unable to store files in the root directory and forcing you to store it somewhere with some meaning. This seems like it would just resolve into a documents directory and you’re back where you started with a flat bag of files that you need to organize arbitrarily. Also, you can use hierarchies wi…

>I have never seen this implemented

Great argument for tags! Sure, it's never been done, but it's possible that someone will re-implement the inherent properties of filesystems with tags in the future, so let's take your filesystem away now!

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#270

Post by Arbalest »

bllguo wrote: post #240
cally wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I do, because all the people at my office using the desktop app complain about bad syncs, sudden filling up of the local hard drive and general slowness
Post reply on HN