10 ms·

Am I the only one who sees this as a step backwards in usability? I like having the scrollbar as a visual indication of how far down I've gone in content.

city41 16y ago
iOS still gives you that indication, at least to an extent. Whenever you scroll an iOS app a little indicator of where the scrollbar would be appears.
- edoloughlin 15y ago
  Does this mean there's nothing to 'grab' with a mouse and drag to scroll? Surely a step backwards.
  - jordanekay 15y ago
    In Mac OS X Lion, you can reveal the scrollbar by mousing over to the right gutter area, and you can drag it as you would a normal scrollbar. There is also the option to have them always appear. But by Fitt's law that's an exponentially less efficient way to navigate through a document. How many people actually use scrollbars that way?
    - iamdave 15y ago
      In what way? Moving their mouse cursor over to it, clicking and dragging? I don't know. A lot?
    - hernan7 15y ago
      I have seen some non-technical people that use the scrollbar all the time. Some even use those little arrows at the upper and lower ends of the scrollbar. I guess they were taught that way, and it works for them (for the few times a day they use a computer). And they just don't see the need of learning a new way to move up and down a document.
JonoW 15y ago
I'm with you on this one. Fading scroll bars make sense on mobile devices because there is very limited screen real estate; we don't have the same issue on a desktop/laptop. I also like using the size of the scrollbar to figure out how much content a document has at a glance.
- jordanekay 15y ago
  Mac OS X Lion, like iOS, flashes the scroll bars when the view loads, so you have that information from the beginning.
adeaver 15y ago
That and the issue of being forced to scroll through a potentially long page to get to the bottom, which is where the information you're actually after is located. Major usability fail.
- JonWood 15y ago
  This is my biggest problem with the iPad Twitter application, which stays at the last point you used it. If that point was two days ago it can take a while to scroll through the backlog to get to now. It does seem easily solvable though, either with a "jump to now" button, or maybe a two finger flick taking you to the top of a list.
  - andrewdavey 15y ago
    Just tap the very top of the screen. That takes you back to the top. This of course shows the problem with gesture based UI in general: lack of discoverability.
- jordanekay 15y ago
  No. With the keyboard, use the End key. With the mouse or trackpad, flick up quickly. Exponentially more efficient than dragging a scrollbar or clicking at the end of the scroll gutter.
locopati 15y ago
One of my biggest pet peeves with webOS - no scroll bar or indicator
atomicdog 15y ago
B-but it's so shiney and modern!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jordanekay 15y ago
  No, it's less shiny than the predecessor, which was actually graphically "shiny," in that it's a flat gray and only rarely appears.
nlawalker 15y ago
Not just that - the scrollbar also lets you scroll at any speed you want (just grab and drag), and lets you instantly jump to an arbitrary point in the document you are looking at. "Shuffling" through content is nice if you are reading top to bottom, but it's hard to beat a scrollbar if you're jumping around.
- nfg 15y ago
  > the scrollbar also lets you scroll at any speed you want (just grab and drag) Just one point on this, you possibly know this but scrolling accelerates on iOS, so the more you flick the faster it seems to go, I'm not sure if it works this way in Lion or not. Admittedly it's not as precise, but does mean going from top->bottom isn't as infuriatingly slow as one might imagine.
  - acous 15y ago
    The acceleration is present in Lion and it's more sensitive than in iOS, so you can get through about 5 window heights with a fast flick or go pixel by pixel if you move slow enough. Also if you flick again before the inertia has died down, the acceleration seems to build up, so 3 quick flicks might get you through 20 screens of content. Pretty cool really.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  And don't forget an immediate visual indicator of the total length of the document. I feel like scroll bars have really matured to the point of being almost perfect. The only things I can think of to really change (looking at the scroll bars on this window right now) are: 1. disappear when content fits in the window instead of grayed out scroll bars; and 2. Get rid of the vestigial up and down arrow buttons. Last time I saw something really horrible done with scroll bars was in Google Wave. What a disaster. Here I feel like Apple seems to be having issues because they're trying to form a consistency between iOS and OSX, but there's an inherent tension in that iOS is a direct manipulation metaphor, and OSX can't really be. It goes both ways. On iOS, they're running out of input bandwidth that's strictly metaphorical, so they're now resorting to gestures, which are out of metaphor and not discoverable. On OSX Lion, scrolling is immediately inconsistent with iOS, because, of course, it's not a direct manipulation metaphor, so there's already an extra level of abstraction, and you scroll with two fingers instead of with one. Because of that level of abstraction, the direction is basically arbitrary, though I suppose it makes it slightly more consistent with iOS, in that you're (in a +1 remove) pulling on the content like in iOS, instead of pulling on the scroll bar. But not showing the scroll bar by default is especially weird to me, in that the constraint for iOS--screen real estate--doesn't really exist on a desktop environment. Why not provide that information, then? Consistency over usability is my guess. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
jpr 15y ago
It's Apple. They don't give a fuck about usability as long as their UI is different from that of Windows.

city41 16y ago

iOS still gives you that indication, at least to an extent. Whenever you scroll an iOS app a little indicator of where the scrollbar would be appears.

edoloughlin 15y ago
Does this mean there's nothing to 'grab' with a mouse and drag to scroll? Surely a step backwards.
- jordanekay 15y ago
  In Mac OS X Lion, you can reveal the scrollbar by mousing over to the right gutter area, and you can drag it as you would a normal scrollbar. There is also the option to have them always appear. But by Fitt's law that's an exponentially less efficient way to navigate through a document. How many people actually use scrollbars that way?
  - iamdave 15y ago
    In what way? Moving their mouse cursor over to it, clicking and dragging? I don't know. A lot?
  - hernan7 15y ago
    I have seen some non-technical people that use the scrollbar all the time. Some even use those little arrows at the upper and lower ends of the scrollbar. I guess they were taught that way, and it works for them (for the few times a day they use a computer). And they just don't see the need of learning a new way to move up and down a document.

JonoW 15y ago

I'm with you on this one. Fading scroll bars make sense on mobile devices because there is very limited screen real estate; we don't have the same issue on a desktop/laptop. I also like using the size of the scrollbar to figure out how much content a document has at a glance.

jordanekay 15y ago
Mac OS X Lion, like iOS, flashes the scroll bars when the view loads, so you have that information from the beginning.

adeaver 15y ago

That and the issue of being forced to scroll through a potentially long page to get to the bottom, which is where the information you're actually after is located. Major usability fail.

JonWood 15y ago
This is my biggest problem with the iPad Twitter application, which stays at the last point you used it. If that point was two days ago it can take a while to scroll through the backlog to get to now. It does seem easily solvable though, either with a "jump to now" button, or maybe a two finger flick taking you to the top of a list.
- andrewdavey 15y ago
  Just tap the very top of the screen. That takes you back to the top. This of course shows the problem with gesture based UI in general: lack of discoverability.
jordanekay 15y ago
No. With the keyboard, use the End key. With the mouse or trackpad, flick up quickly. Exponentially more efficient than dragging a scrollbar or clicking at the end of the scroll gutter.

locopati 15y ago

One of my biggest pet peeves with webOS - no scroll bar or indicator

atomicdog 15y ago

B-but it's so shiney and modern!

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jordanekay 15y ago
No, it's less shiny than the predecessor, which was actually graphically "shiny," in that it's a flat gray and only rarely appears.

nlawalker 15y ago

Not just that - the scrollbar also lets you scroll at any speed you want (just grab and drag), and lets you instantly jump to an arbitrary point in the document you are looking at. "Shuffling" through content is nice if you are reading top to bottom, but it's hard to beat a scrollbar if you're jumping around.

nfg 15y ago
> the scrollbar also lets you scroll at any speed you want (just grab and drag) Just one point on this, you possibly know this but scrolling accelerates on iOS, so the more you flick the faster it seems to go, I'm not sure if it works this way in Lion or not. Admittedly it's not as precise, but does mean going from top->bottom isn't as infuriatingly slow as one might imagine.
- acous 15y ago
  The acceleration is present in Lion and it's more sensitive than in iOS, so you can get through about 5 window heights with a fast flick or go pixel by pixel if you move slow enough. Also if you flick again before the inertia has died down, the acceleration seems to build up, so 3 quick flicks might get you through 20 screens of content. Pretty cool really.
joebadmo 15y ago
And don't forget an immediate visual indicator of the total length of the document. I feel like scroll bars have really matured to the point of being almost perfect. The only things I can think of to really change (looking at the scroll bars on this window right now) are: 1. disappear when content fits in the window instead of grayed out scroll bars; and 2. Get rid of the vestigial up and down arrow buttons. Last time I saw something really horrible done with scroll bars was in Google Wave. What a disaster. Here I feel like Apple seems to be having issues because they're trying to form a consistency between iOS and OSX, but there's an inherent tension in that iOS is a direct manipulation metaphor, and OSX can't really be. It goes both ways. On iOS, they're running out of input bandwidth that's strictly metaphorical, so they're now resorting to gestures, which are out of metaphor and not discoverable. On OSX Lion, scrolling is immediately inconsistent with iOS, because, of course, it's not a direct manipulation metaphor, so there's already an extra level of abstraction, and you scroll with two fingers instead of with one. Because of that level of abstraction, the direction is basically arbitrary, though I suppose it makes it slightly more consistent with iOS, in that you're (in a +1 remove) pulling on the content like in iOS, instead of pulling on the scroll bar. But not showing the scroll bar by default is especially weird to me, in that the constraint for iOS--screen real estate--doesn't really exist on a desktop environment. Why not provide that information, then? Consistency over usability is my guess. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

jpr 15y ago

It's Apple. They don't give a fuck about usability as long as their UI is different from that of Windows.