But Ben! What happens when spiders crawl your site and can't find comment content?
Spiders should see the comments if you hide the comments with JS on page load instead of in the default CSS.
Don't reinvent the scrollbar
51–60 of 172 posts
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#52I was nodding along, when suddenly... > One alternative is to ignore iOS and OS X users. But that’s not very nice. There are many scrolling libraries available that you can use, such as NiceScroll. > Or you can just make your own indicator like the one seen at the very start of the article. Just don’t use a horizontal indicator for vertical progression :) No! Do not do this. Just stop. Stop reinventing and reimplemen…
Agreed! OS X users can choose when to show a scrollbar: it's one of the 'General' system preferences. Reimplementing the scrollbar for users who have not taken the option to show the scrollbar is deliberately going against their stated preference.
> Reimplementing the scrollbar for users who have not taken the option to show the scrollbar is deliberately going against their stated preference.
While in general I agree with your post, I think saying it goes "against their stated preferences" is a bit strong considering that (from what I've read here) not showing the scrollbar is the default. In my experience many people never change the defaults.
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#53 > Maybe there are better ways of monetising than forcing
>multiple pages of ads down your users throats? :)
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#54Am I the only one who really appreciate OS X's disappearing scroll bar? Leaves the content alone and works well for overflowing divs on pages. And if you really want to take a peak at where you are, just… you know, two finger touch the trackpad. Good thing people aren't dragging the scroll bar anymore too.
Requiring the user to touch the trackpad (with two fingers, at that) just to know the relative position in the page is an inconvenience, at least to some.
Also, isn't the scroll bar really useful when you need to scroll up and down the page quickly by an arbitrary amount?
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#55I was nodding along, when suddenly... > One alternative is to ignore iOS and OS X users. But that’s not very nice. There are many scrolling libraries available that you can use, such as NiceScroll. > Or you can just make your own indicator like the one seen at the very start of the article. Just don’t use a horizontal indicator for vertical progression :) No! Do not do this. Just stop. Stop reinventing and reimplemen…
Especially since NiceScroll isn't very nice. The scrolling is jerky. Leave the OS defaults for scrolling. On OS X, there is an option to keep the scrollbar always visible, and the OS itself decides to do this if you don't have an input device capable of scrolling. Some janky 3rd party scroll library isn't going to know any of this information.
> Especially since NiceScroll isn't very nice. The scrolling is jerky.
Interesting, on what devices? We are using NiceScroll for a widget right now and it's very smooth, even on my Nexus 4.
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Not to put to fine a point on it, but if your user is on iOS or OS X, they are accustomed to losing sight of their progress because, as the article says, "Apple knows best." Going out of your way as a content author to correct for the user interface quirks of the reader's preferred reading environment seems extraordinary and unnecessary. Presumably a non-trivial number of iOS and OS X users actually like the…
It's my preferred reading environment, but I hate that apple made this decision, because, as my sibling commenter here noted, it's outright user hostile. Apple never really totally understood the "visibility" requirement of usable interfaces. They like to hide things to make them look pretty, and it only leads to better advertising, not better interfaces. Thankfully there's still a setting to always show scrollbars.…
I actually agree with you--I prefer for the scrollbar to remain visible. In my preferred reading environment, a Windows PC running Firefox, it does remain visible. I like clean design, but not at the expense of function. I am firmly of the opinion that too much functionality has been sacrificed from modern user interfaces at the altar of simplicity.
I'm nevertheless of the point of view that the content author should not fuss with these specific particulars, leaving them instead to the discretion of the designers of the reading environment itself. The consumer of the content can then weigh the design of those elements when selecting a preferred reading environment.
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#57There have been improvements to scroll bars; they just haven't really gained widespread acceptance.
On Genera, when you moused over the vertical scroll bar, a thin horizontal line appears across the screen at whatever x height your mouse was is. You could then click to tell the OS that you wanted to wanted to reflow the page using that x height as a reference point. If you pointed your mouse at the horizontal scroll bar, a vertical line appeared, and you could scroll left to right. This is sort of like pressing Control-l on Emacs. Instead scrolling and getting the desired result by trial and error, you could tell the OS exactly what you wanted to do. It was very useful for scrolling within pictures.
You can see a video of this here [1] at 46:50.
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially since NiceScroll isn't very nice. The scrolling is jerky. Leave the OS defaults for scrolling. On OS X, there is an option to keep the scrollbar always visible, and the OS itself decides to do this if you don't have an input device capable of scrolling. Some janky 3rd party scroll library isn't going to know any of this information.
> Especially since NiceScroll isn't very nice. The scrolling is jerky. Interesting, on what devices? We are using NiceScroll for a widget right now and it's very smooth, even on my Nexus 4.
On my MacBook Pro it's bad. The scrolling is jerky and doesn't feel right, like there's too much inertia and too much momentum, and you can't stop it once it's scrolling. On iOS there is to little momentum. There's also no point in it. Safari already scrolls web pages, why re-implement it in javascript? You're also losing new features OS X 10.9 does under the hood, like pre-rendering off-screen content to enable smooth 60fps scrolling. Let the OS do its job.
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#59Am I the only one who really appreciate OS X's disappearing scroll bar? Leaves the content alone and works well for overflowing divs on pages. And if you really want to take a peak at where you are, just… you know, two finger touch the trackpad. Good thing people aren't dragging the scroll bar anymore too.
Requiring the user to touch the trackpad (with two fingers, at that) just to know the relative position in the page is an inconvenience, at least to some. Also, isn't the scroll bar really useful when you need to scroll up and down the page quickly by an arbitrary amount?
It's an inconvenience for a (in my opinion) tiny problem. The pros far outweight the cons.
I expected someone asking about scrolling an arbitrary amount. After all these years of reading internet articles and pdf manuals on Mac/iOS, I've rarely ever encountered a case where clicking the position on the scroll bar beats the speed of flickering the trackpad (and that's even excluding the precision). In fact, there's rarely an internet page where I can't get to the end within one flick.
http://www.theverge.com (While we're at it, yes, you can still drag OS X's scroll bar if you really want to. I've used it for pdf manuals).
Re: Don't reinvent the scrollbar
#60But Ben! What happens when spiders crawl your site and can't find comment content?
Spiders should see the comments if you hide the comments with JS on page load instead of in the default CSS.
I'm not sure, but Google could be unhappy with that. It'll look like you are trying to put a lot of keywords for the crawler that the users don't see and may classify the site as spammy.