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Scrollbars are becoming a problem

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Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#761

Post by chefandy »

yowlingcat wrote: post #662
CRConrad wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. "Informs"?!? Deforms! WTF does phone usage have to do with sabotaging the UI on a computer???

People are generationally creatures of habit. Newer generations are entering the workforce for whom their first personal computing device was a touchscreen smartphone. With that context in mind, it's not surprising that a "native" responsive experience to them will be mobile centric rather than desktop centric. The market then evolves to cater to the needs of its largest cohorts.

Yes. To engineers, the interface is something you use to interact with software. To users, the interface is the software. When they buy (with money or creepy analytics for marketers) software, they're buying an interface. As anybody in business knows, you're not in the business you think you're in, you're in the business your customers think you're in, and if they expect software to behave in a way it can't, their competitor is a half-inch down the app store results/google listing/etc.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#762

Post by efreak »

canucker2016 wrote: post #425
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That title bar thing, good god damn. I have to concentrate my vision on the title bar to place my fucking cursor between non-outlined active sections just to grab that motherfucker and shove it over. It is entirely a user experience regression. There's no benefit gained, whatsoever, from moving content to the title bar. Easily moving a window by dragging the title bar was something that "just worked" for at least two…

Alt-Space, 'M' is your friendly keyboard method to move a window around. After pressing those three keys, use the cursor keys to move the window around as you desire, and press the Enter key when you're happy with the window's new location or press the Esc key to cancel the move op. Works really well when the window's title bar has been moved offscreen for some reason. IBM's CUA for the win. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Once you've moved the window with the arrow keys you can also use the mouse to move the window. The problem with this is that it's _slow_, and it doesn't actually work on some software. Some non-native window frameworks like to disable (or don't implement) all hotkeys by default, including f10, Alt+space and sometimes even the tab key. IMO the only reason for a program to disable the standard windowing mechanics is because it's intended to be used as an overlay (programs like launchy or slickrun).

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#763

Post by worik »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #422
worik wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have dreamt in VAX assembly

Is it still okay to make "nothing sucks like a VAX" jokes? (I kid, I think VMS has a better design than Linux)

> Is it still okay to make "nothing sucks like a VAX" jokes?

Please!

I was a stage II CS student learning assembly programming on a VAX simulator. Wrote a VAX simulator, in VAX assembly then ran VAX assembly programmes on it.

Was a lot of fun. The dreams were weird tho

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#764

Post by quantified »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

I'd go with Win 7.

Mac is all secret handshakes, nothing discoverable, terrible af keyboard-primary work. Windows was very good at letting you stay on the keyboard.

In the spirit of scroll bar discussion, the standard of Ctrl-Home, Crtl-End, Shift-Ctrl-Home and Shift-Ctrl-End are so good. No such "begin of doc" and "end of doc" on a Mac except if an app wills it.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#765

Post by expazl »

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems.

The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. That's just a horrible interaction that never should have been considered in any setting. At least that's my opinion.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#766

Post by GuB-42 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #150
codalan wrote: post #135

It's not just scrollbars. It's the elimination of window borders. Aside from not being able to differentiate one window from another similarly colored window in the background, it's nearly impossible to click and hold on anything along the edge to resize the window. It's the overloading of the title bar with so much shit like search boxes and extraneous buttons that a user has almost no place to grip to move the wind…

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

I'd go up to Windows 7.

From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the UI fundamentally stayed the same, with a few details here and there, including, scroll bars, window title bars and borders.

Essentially, what changed is just cosmetic and mostly as a result of better hardware. Earlier versions of Windows were designed for 256 color displays, Windows XP fully embraced 24-bit color, and Windows 7 was designed with GPUs in mind. That's how we got from pixel art to shading to semi-transparency.

And I must admit I liked Windows 7 because it was both functional and pretty. A nice, modern for the time skin on top of tried and tested UI core concepts.

Windows 8 broke everything as an attempt to unify the desktop and mobile experience, and we haven't recovered since then. In fact, I think mobile killed desktop usability. We are in a conundrum that we didn't find a way to resolve: desktop and mobile are fundamentally different platforms, so they would need different UI paradigms, but there is an overlap functionality as many apps are present on both platforms, so it would be nice to provide the same experience on both.

To that, add the fact that the web is often third or a fourth option (mobile and desktop web), and the ability to use native controls in web browsers is rather poor, so people make their own, but then, you want the website to look like the desktop app. Same kind of problem.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#767

Post by deepspace »

expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

I am going to disagree strongly there. The alternative way to scroll is, in most cases, the mouse scroll wheel. And that gets tedious (and strenuous for some people) really fast when the document gets large. I absolutely need the ability to use the scroll bar to change my position in a document.

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#768

Post by MagicMoonlight »

expazl wrote: post #765

> Ok so a lot of folks have fine motor control problems. The scrollbar is not there so you can use it to change your scroll position. It's there solely for the purpose of visualizing what your current scroll position is. Every device and every application should have a way to scroll that does not rely on the assumption that people will hunt out some narrow area of their screen and hold it while dragging to scroll. Th…

If that were true then they wouldn’t go to the effort of making it draggable

Re: Scrollbars are becoming a problem

#770

Post by deepspace »

mort96 wrote: post #522
MenhirMike wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 2000 was the last truly great Windows for me. It was the last Windows version that had a working "Find in File Contents" feature without having to install grepwin.

I won't argue against Windows 2000's usability. But I will say that to me, as someone who first started using computers in the XP era, any Windows earlier than Windows 7 looks so god damn ugly to me, and Windows 2000 even more so than XP. Interestingly though, I don't have the same impression when looking at the old Apple OSes. To me, Mac OS 9 looks old, but not ugly.

To the contrary, XP and Vista' soft, round buttons and edges always made me think of a Douglas-Adamsian dystopia. Win2000 was bare bones, square and functional.
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