points by bromuro 3 days ago | 0 comments
Always-on-screen scrollbars were useless. Now they appear only when needed.
[–] exmadscientist 3 days ago
[–] eviks 3 days ago
Correct, but you don't need the full thick scrollbar for the indicator function, some apps use a much smaller dot/guide
[–] account42 2 days ago
I'm constantly searching for the scroll bar position on mobile FF because its barely visible. And that's at least on a device where you can make the argument that horizontal screen real estate is limited, unlike a desktop PC where hiding scoll bars to save space makes zero sense at all.
[–] jasomill 3 days ago
More to the point, the indicator doesn’t need to always be visible to be useful. Appearing only when the viewport is noving works fine on the iPhone, for instance, because slighly moving the viewpoint to reveal it is a convenient action, and less well on desktop PCs where your hands are less likely to remain near movement controls at all times.
It’s also applicaction specific: I care a lot more about relative viewport size and position when reading a long document than I do when I’m entering commands at the bottom of a terminal’s scrollback buffer.
[–] Geezus_42 2 days ago
I don't disagree with your overall point. However, I don't find wiggling the scroll wheel on my mouse or a quick two finger swipe on a good touchpad any less convenient than using my thumb to do the same jiggle on my phone.
[–] jasomill 2 days ago
I do, possibly because I rarely use laptops and tend to lean back away from my desk when reading material on my desktop with its 55” display.
No matter, this is exactly the sort of thing that can and should be implemented as a systemwide user option, possibly with app- or even app-profile level overrides for cases like terminal emulators where users are less likely to prefer full-time scrollbars.
[–] oneeyedpigeon 2 days ago
That would've been a much better argument when we were rocking 640x480 screens. 15 pixels out of 1,920 is hardly a sacrifice for the added utility.
[–] bc_programming 3 days ago
I think elements like scrollbars remaining visible serve a useful purpose of their own. I don't just mean scrollbars in this case depicting the location in the scroll, either, but instead offering a fully predictable interface that looks the same and doesn't depend on state. Elements like scrollbars only appearing when needed- expanding when you hover near them, for example, removes some of the predictability of the interface. If you have elements all over a UI that only appear "when needed" it starts to become a bit of a circus show, IMO; ribbons or toolbars or menus that only appear when you press alt or hover near the top of a window; scrollbars that only appear when you either scroll or move the mouse near the scroll elevator area, etc.
It's some of the same push that has removed titlebars from desktop UI. Programs like Chrome spearheaded effectively taking over that area, because it's a "waste of screen space", But it's not, that screen space was used for a predictable, known UI element that used to be fully expected on all desktop UI Window elements. It's sort of like how we have with writing a predictable convention of words on a page to have margins on the left and right. If that followed the way UX has gone we'd have dismissed page margins as "wasted space" and all text would have 0" margins and run all the way to the edges of the page and we'd pat ourselves on the back for "using page real estate" more effectively.
[–] Geezus_42 2 days ago
I do think hiding things can be over done, but it's rare that I have found the lack of a title bar problematic. Most apps don't actually remove it, they just decorate it to match their UI. It still has the standard buttons and can be clicked to drag the app around.
[–] eviks 3 days ago
No they don't, they appear every time you scroll even if you never use the bar. And flashing of ui elements is in many cases worse than wasting that space permanently.
It's a tragedy decades of UI research/design can't get any of the fundamental design elements right
[–] firesteelrain 3 days ago
I restored them and made them fat again in FireFox. It was getting too thin and hard to find
[–] bombcar 3 days ago
I hate when magically appearing scrollbars cause the screen to redraw - I especially hate it when the content needs a scrollbar if NOT present, so it appears, which makes the content reflow so it doesn't need it, and it keeps swapping back and forth.
Good times.
[–] publlus_enigma 3 days ago
There has been a bug in Apple's Quicklook on macOS for as long as I can remember, where the right side of a document is slightly cropped when Always Show Scrollbars is enabled. It appears to expect that the scroll bars should only appear intermittently and renders over the content.
Very frustrating when one is scanning documents and photos, and verifying them through Finder shows phantom cropping.
I personally like the scroll bars to always be visible as they serve as both an indicator and a control.
[–] kevin_thibedeau 3 days ago
It's really annoying that you need to click on something that the scrollbar covers up or steals focus from.
[–] bombcar 3 days ago
Schrödinger's button - you go to click it, a scroll bar appears, the button moves. You go to the new button location, the scroll bar disappears, the button returns.
[–] ThatMedicIsASpy 3 days ago
They are handy on a tablet. At the same time they are not since dynamic content might be loaded so the true size of the page is not shown to me by the scroll bar.
[–] samplatt 3 days ago
And fuck anyone that likes fullscreen programs and uses multiple monitors.
Always-on-screen scrollbars are only useless if you think that indication is useless. Many people find it quite valuable.