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Who Killed the Scrollbar?

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Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#271

Post by redwall_hp »

flyinghamster wrote: post #18
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…

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!

This is one of my favorite parts of OS X, and it's sad that there aren't many Linux DEs doing it: the persistent menu bar. It's always expected that it be right at the top of the screen, and utilized. Firefox and Chrome, by default, have survived hamburgerization...because it can't be hidden. Sure, an application that doesn't use it at all (yuck) can just not implement anything beyond the application name menu, but something like a browser has no choice but for the bar to be visible.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#272

Post by redwall_hp »

deergomoo wrote: post #213
novok wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testing on my iOS device, I don't think it's an app thing, but UIKit standard thing that comes with scrollviews. The bar doesn't become finger thick, but it's still usable. I've been using iOS devices for a long time, so it shows you how hidden it is. I agree it's sloppy on desktops, but it helps to understand the reasons why the sloppyness happens. Kind of like electron apps :p

I believe it’s new in iOS 13

Way back in 2008, the Music app made use of this sort of feature (baked into UIKit). Table views can be "indexed," meaning you get A, B, C, etc down the side, and can swipe on it to move faster down the list.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#273

Post by sjy »

coribuci wrote: post #266
sjy wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" .

Yes, I’ve been using it almost every day for a decade, so I know where everything is by this point – but even when it was released I liked it almost immediately, because it surfaced useful style, paragraph spacing and table editing functions that used to be buried in menus. I prefer the ribbon interface in LibreOffice now, too. Next time you get lost (and it still happens to me just as it did in the menu era), I suggest using the search box instead of your memory of Office 2003.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#274

Post by taejavu »

city41 wrote: post #37
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 was pretty blown away to see that Dropbox's hamburger menu opens to take over the entire screen, including on desktop. In other words, they only considered mobile in their design. You can try it even if you don't have an account, just go to dropbox.com and click the hamburger in the upper right.

That's not true, their desktop breakpoint is 1024px. If the window is wider than that, there's no hamburger menu, and clicking "Sign in" reveals a menu that takes up 1/3 of the right side of the screen.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#275

Post by city41 »

taejavu wrote: post #274
city41 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty blown away to see that Dropbox's hamburger menu opens to take over the entire screen, including on desktop. In other words, they only considered mobile in their design. You can try it even if you don't have an account, just go to dropbox.com and click the hamburger in the upper right.

That's not true, their desktop breakpoint is 1024px. If the window is wider than that, there's no hamburger menu, and clicking "Sign in" reveals a menu that takes up 1/3 of the right side of the screen.

This is what I see: https://i.imgur.com/nmi0FHQ.png

For me the hamburger button's media query is set to a width of 1366px.

I don't have a dropbox account. I do notice no matter what I always end up at `https://www.dropbox.com/?landing=dbv2`, so I may somehow be being put into an AB test. Even an incognito window does that. The name `dbv2` might imply a new version of the site that is in the works? Shrug.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#276

Post by jplayer01 »

thrower123 wrote: post #33
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…

Desktop software has never recovered from Office adopting the terrible Ribbon element instead of proper menus and toolbars.

I don't see the connection between the ribbon and the awful Metro design style. They couldn't be further apart in every way. It might look unfamiliar, but it still packs a ton of functionality into a small space, emphasizes the use of deeply structured alt menus and has tons of customizability. None of which shows up in Metro.

Also, I want to know what brain dead MS designer decided that multitasking different control panel windows was a Bad Thing, and put the whole settings section into a single window that can't be separated. Do these people even use their own OS?

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#277

Post by nobodyandproud »

robertoandred wrote: post #89
nobodyandproud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time for me. When the page scrollbar is thin, and one of the page-width elements in the page also has a scrollbar on the right? I am fighting on both mobile AND the desktop! It’s extremely bad UI design when even on the desktop browser with a mouse and keyboard, I end up fighting to grab the page scrollbar. And it’s not the page designers fault here.

So turn on scrollbars at the OS level?

That depends on the browser.

For Chrome, https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/19glyg/how_to_...

A bad default that has to be edited by hand, in a tucked-away location.

This is awful.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#278

Post by squarefoot »

An old dumb phone of mine had a mini trackball I found immensely useful. The firmware (proprietary) was total garbage, but moving between menus was a breeze. Having a trackball rather than a touch interface means that icons and text don't need to be larger to be hit by a finger; all the user does is move the trackball until the relevant object is focused or text highlighted, then use it. Voila, lots of space saved for actual information.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#279

Post by frosted-flakes »

coribuci wrote: post #257
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. Stupidity is contagious. And Microsoft's idea of innovation is copying what the others do and brake it beyond all repair. > I've tried Word and Excel, both behaved so. > Insane! I'm shocked you used such a © "word". The new way to h…

> Stupidity is contagious. And Microsoft's idea of innovation is copying what the others do

Microsoft Office switched to the "backstage" menu in Office 2010, long before full-screen menus became a popular pattern. Office 2007 had the app menu, which is the same as the File menu in the Windows File Explorer. In my opinion, the app menu is far superior simply because it doesn't change the context and it's easily dismissable.

> The new way to have fun is to be in a meeting and see the presenter trying for 5 minutes to find something in the ribbon menu.

The Ribbon is far superior to the old teetering tower of random menus, toolbars, and panels. Everything is in a single logical place, with (almost) every button having a text label and many having intuitive icons. And now it has a search bar.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#280

Post by hnick »

cronix wrote: post #103

...and hijacking scroll behavior. Please stop that and just use the defaults, like everyone expects. I'm tired of getting to a site and having it scroll pages at a time when it should just scroll a few lines. And then trying to get back to the correct spot is a pain. Who does this stuff and why do you think it's necessary? What problem do you think you are solving by doing this? I just hit the back button. I'm not go…

Maybe I'm a unique and strange person but my preferred scroll behaviour when reading a website is to middle click and move the mouse. Speed varies as the mouse moves so if you move just a bit you can get the page to auto-scroll at your perfect reading speed.

Of course, it's broken in a lot of sites, because many front end devs apparently don't know or care that this exists.

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