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Who Killed the Scrollbar?

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Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#281

Post by makecheck »

Agreed that these mobile-esque designs are out of control but some remedies are:

- In iOS Safari you can tap the area above the address bar to jump back to the top of the web page.

- On iOS 13, you can finally press-hold the scroll blob and drag it in a sensible way.

- When there is a keyboard that lacks page-up/page-down/home/end, using the Command (Apple/Cloverleaf) key with up/down arrow tends to be equivalent to home/end.

- Fortunately a lot of web sites that have messed-up layouts still support Reader View, which can restore some sanity and standard controls.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#282

Post by frosted-flakes »

jandrese wrote: post #160
eropple wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super curious--how often do you actually use the menu and what do you use it for? I ask because I literally can't remember the last time I did in Firefox; everything's a keyboard shortcut. Fullscreen is F11, inspector is F12, refresh is F5 (even go-to-URL-bar is F6).

I pull down the History menu reasonably often. I'm one of the few people who still uses bookmarks too. I found that hitting alt was annoying and I'd forget about the menu and try to find stuff on the Hamburger menu instead and get annoyed.

Just put the History menu dropdown in the toolbar beside the hamburger menu.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#283

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

ken wrote: post #228
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've heard this from several sources, but never been able to make it work. What apps, and what version of iOS? Is it new in iOS 13?

It's pretty much everywhere you can see the scrollbar. Just press on the scrollbar for a second (so that it seems deliberate), then drag it around.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#284

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

tarentel wrote: post #42
wlesieutre wrote: post #6

> 2. No flipping way to quickly navigate to the top or bottom of the post. I don't know what the state of this is on Android, but iOS 13 lets you grab the scrollbar and go immediately to wherever you want in a document. The scrollbar doesn't show up by default, so it's a 2-step operation. Scroll a bit to make the scroll indicator appear, then grab it and scroll faster. Works well but I doubt many people are aware of…

I did not know this. Another way to quickly get to the top of tables in iOS, assuming you're in an app, is to double tap the button of whatever page you're in in the navigation bar at the bottom. Some apps somehow disable this but it's the default behavior built into the OS.

Tapping the button of the tab you're on doesn't always scroll to the top; it does always scroll to the default position. In the "All Photos" tab of the Photos app, which is sorted with newest photos at the bottom, tapping the tab again will bring you down to the bottom, as that's the default position.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#285

Post by clhodapp »

_f1dq wrote: post #51
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.

I see this happening a lot. "Mobile first!" doesn't mean "Mobile only!"

It kinda does though, because modern software companies tend to shift focus away from projects before they get completely "done". The whole reason for "mobile first" is the tacit admission that whatever is not the primary focus will often get drastically less attention because there's already something that sorta "works".

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#286

Post by frosted-flakes »

com2kid wrote: post #231
thrower123 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or just use the Quick Access Toolbar. I have it set up with all of my most used commands that I know the icon for.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#287

Post by masswerk »

redwall_hp wrote: post #271
flyinghamster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I guess, we may be confident to see the menu bar dissappear in a not so distant future iteration of OS X. With a bit of bad luck and some rather cynical retroverse distortion, it may be replaced by a Hamburger (as in the Xerox Star Interface, which introduced it to indicate the anchor for the single menu in the entire system.)

Placing the cursor in text by imitating the new cursor catch and place game of iOS will be also fun. Probably so much fun that quite a number of people will stay longer in the office to play with it.

That said, the menu bar has already taken serious damage by the introduction of OS X, when the first menu item became the variable width application name. Before this, the File and Edit menus and their essential menu items were exactly on the same place in every application, rendering the most essential commands a matter of muscle memory, quite like a guesture.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#288

Post by frosted-flakes »

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…

If Ribbons are implemented well, they're great. But often they're not, and then they're terrible. It takes a lot of work to properly organise a Ribbon for a complex program. Microsoft nailed it for Office, but programs like AutoCAD are still not well done.

Microsoft have put together an awesome guide to the Ribbon. Even if you're not making one, it's a great read that really goes into the reasons it exists: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/cmd-r.... I came across this page by chance when I was in high school, and I think it was what sparked my interest in user interface and user experience design.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#289

Post by frosted-flakes »

agluszak wrote: post #220
dredmorbius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On various apps, with Google Chrome/Android being the worst, it can take minutes to scroll through pages / tabs. I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open (well over 1,000 on desktop Firefox, which actually is fairly managable), and on Android there's simply no way to deal with more than ~20 (which I can easily hit in a minute or so). Firefox/Android is far better in this regard, but on my device is so slow (literall…

> well over 1,000 on desktop Firefox, which actually is fairly managable How? :O What's your workflow?

Probably Tree Tabs, a vertical treed list of tabs on the side of the window.

Re: Who Killed the Scrollbar?

#290

Post by saagarjha »

redwall_hp wrote: post #272
deergomoo wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Contacts still has this.
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