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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#491

Post by reportgunner »

marmshallow wrote: post #122

While folks are rightfully bashing macOS’s hidden scroll bars, I would like to advertise an iOS feature that is actually pro-scroll bar. As of iOS 13, you can grab the scroll bar to scroll at hyper speed rather than repeatedly flicking the screen. Not sure if there’s a proper name for this feature but it’s explained here https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/08/05/scroll-faster-iphon...

Are you saying that you had to repeatedly flick the screen before iOS 13 ?

This "feature" has been available on every Windows, Linux and Android device I have ever used.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#492

Post by Nition »

antod wrote: post #469
Nition wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was often an additional on-screen interface on VCRs for setting up timed recordings, usually with giant white text on a blue background.

That was only on the last generation or so of VCRs. For the first decade or two, programming them was like setting an old digital watch with 2 or 3 buttons and making different digits on the clock flash.

I disagree with "last generation or so", our one from the mid-to-late 80s had it as an option (you could set a single recording in the way you describe, but needed the TV display for multiple recordings). Apparently the Akai VS-2 was the first with an on-screen display on the TV, in 1983.[1]

[1] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19830424&id=...

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#493

Post by koyote »

fingerlocks wrote: post #170
bradstewart wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Despite my efforts to consider that people have different preferences for almost everything in life, I am constantly surprised by my assumumptions about how other people do things that turn out to be very wrong. It didn't even occur to me that someone who uses a computer all day long would use a touchpad, even though millions of people own one, Apple continues making them bigger, and the only thing "wron…

I wonder if you’re suffering from past experiences of touch pads from the 1990s? I was a slow adopter for similar reasons. Remind yourself that it works exactly like the screen of an iPhone or iPad, that’s when it clicked for me.

But even on a phone/tablet selecting text is a massive pain. Selecting stuff, dragging stuff, quickly flicking the cursor from one screen to the next: those are all things I assume every developer does at least a couple of times an hour. They are also things that, for me, are very clumsy when using a trackpad.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#494

Post by strogonoff »

Aeolun wrote: post #449
dmkolobov wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 28, and I don’t know how to use most apps and websites anymore, and I’m a web developer. My intro to computers was when I was 6 years old, and I was trying to install games on Windows 95 in a language I didn’t understand(English). The consistency of the layouts was the only thing that made that work. So many of my childhood experiences with computers relied on consistent spatial representations. Kids seem to do j…

A while ago I had a discussion about our UI with our designer, and when I mentioned that nothing seems to work as you’d expect, he said he wants people to learn a unique way of dealing with our interface. It boggles my mind how that is something you could actively want.

Requiring users to learn the idiomatic way your software behaves in order to be productive may be warranted if your functionality is complex, heavily used and more or less unlike any existing software.

Or, your software is niche and its alternatives have such terrible UI that trying to do what the user expects is adding 3x clicks and actively hurting their productivity.

There can be legitimate cases for learning curve, especially if unlearning is involved. If so, the fact that your designer wants the user to learn is a very welcome position. If they make learning effortless and intuitive, you may end up with a solid piece of software.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#495

Post by strogonoff »

marshray wrote: post #440
myself248 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, swipe-sideways on SMS and that's how you can see timestamps! It all sucks. I'm convinced that devs are trying to frustrate me, and it's working. Don't get me started on the icons-without-text design shit.

> swipe-sideways on SMS WHAT?!

Once you discover once that swiping sideways on a message reveals metadata, you notice that this is transferrable to most messengers on iOS (all I use). The first time I discovered that was by accident while playing with the device. I notice that I pretty much never use this feature.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#496

Post by phil294 »

contextfree wrote: post #458
Macuyiko wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was planning to reply to your parent comment that discoverability has always been an issue for me when I work with Apple devices. Whenever I use my wife's iPhone or Mac for a couple of minutes, I get frustrated because everything is all over the place, none of the apps work well together, and everything is hidden. Back on Android, (or Windows, or Linux), it makes sense, whereas she loses her way. Just to point out,…

I appreciated the Windows Phone 7/8 and early Win10 approach to compact icons which was/is: Just have a button next to the icons that expands them to show labels when you press it. Unfortunately later redesigns to Win10 apps seemed to drift away from these patterns towards just having unlabeled icons everywhere.

Sounds interesting, do you happen to have an image of this available? I was not able to find any more information about it

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#497

Post by Negitivefrags »

Klathmon wrote: post #217
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.

There's a windows feature like this which I hate with a passion. If you grab a window and shake it side to side, it minimizes all open windows... So sometimes I'll grab a window to move to my left monitor, decide instead I want it on the right one, and suddenly everything is gone and I now need to go open every single window one at a time. It even took me months to understand that the shaking was what caused it. I wo…

A lot of people don’t know that to undo text operations on IOS you shake the whole phone.

It’s insanity.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#498

Post by newsbinator »

jetpks wrote: post #462
SilasX wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not your comment's parent) Apple making touchpads bigger is why I stick to their 13" 2015 MacBook air! When I got a recent Pro for work, it was nearly unusable from the oversized, oversensitive trackpad. Yes, even after setting all the options that (I was assured) would make it stop picking up unintended presses. When typing, I'd unavoidably brush the trackpad and cause the cursor to move somewhere and click, redire…

Not saying I can make this better for your use case, but I'm curious if you use tap to click? i.e. click with a simple touch. I love the big track pads and also hate the tap to click setting (I want to press to click) and don't have this problem.

I'm the reverse- I always set tap to click and remove force click and haptic feedback.

Just a tap, like on a phone, and I've clicked. I do keep the click sound on though, for feedback.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#499

Post by squiggleblaz »

baggy_trough wrote: post #299
danso wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that Apple’s design mentality is to strive toward the minimalist ideal of an interface in which everything necessary fits on one (phone) screen, and users are acclimated to ask Siri for anything/everything else, e.g. “Siri show me a print/download dialog”

Using Siri is like working in boxing gloves that randomly smash you in the face. It's trained me to avoid it at all costs.

I use Google Assistant for the only thing it's good for: setting a timer. Even then, for some reason, half the time I say "ten minute timer", it hears only "ten minutes" and for some reason thinks I want it to search youtube for a video of a ten minute countdown. I mean, that's completely insane.

Dear Google developers: if you decide to randomly delete a somewhat irrelevant word from a search query and you're left with "ten minute", it's far more likely that a person wants a ten minute timer than that they want to search your database of videos for ten minutes. Also, why do you search youtube instead of the web? Are you doing this specifically to irritate the hell out of me?

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#500

Post by squiggleblaz »

mulmen wrote: post #480
mark-r wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize what the hamburger button did. Designers just started assuming everybody knew.

We have an internal app at work that only has a hamburger button. It makes me sad every time I click on it.

You mean the entire user interface is blank, except for three lines? And then you get to decide what you're going to do in the app?
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