10 ms·

Good Lord, just give me control over the appearance of scrollbars again. Was there some international UI/UX meeting where they declared a holy war on scrollbars

Good Lord, just give me control over the appearance of scrollbars again. Was there some international UI/UX meeting where they declared a holy war on scrollbars? Seems like everyone is trying to make them disappear like they're an embarrassing and unwelcome distant relative they're passive aggressively trying to make go away.

jart 6y ago
What is the use case for scroll bars, now that we have mouse wheels? Progress indication? My view is that content is king and any UI element that needlessly takes away space from the content needs to be destroyed.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  Indicating where you are on the page, and indicating that content can be scrolled. (I've seen webpages where there's content "below the fold" but where it's extremely easy to miss that depending on your screen size.)
- core-questions 6y ago
  > now that we have mouse wheels? * Horizontal scrolling * Scrolling when using pen/touch input on non-touch UIs * Making it obvious that a content area is scrollable * Providing context into how much content is visible vs. hidden, and where you are in the document * Making it easy to scroll to a precise location without sitting there twiddling the wheel for minutes to go through something long > My view is that content is king and any UI element that needlessly takes away space from the content needs to be destroyed. Your view makes sense at 640x480. Maybe on a mobile screen. On a widescreen computer display, there's plenty of space for elegant UI controls.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tsukikage 6y ago
  Being able to click to go directly some porportion of the way through then fine tune, instead of having to scroll through all the intervening space.
- Swenrekcah 6y ago
  I can’t figure out if this is parody or not. In case it isn’t, scroll bars are for quickly figuring out the scope, for quick positioning and for remembering where in the article things are.
- zbrozek 6y ago
  Progress indication and scrollability indication. I'd actually like to see scrollbars enhanced rather than diminished. So for example I would love to see indicators of headings or breaks or page bookmarks. The latter could even be clickable.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    I agree! A lot of code editors are using them in a nice way to display version control info or errors/warnings. Chrome is using it to a small extent when searching using Ctrl-F, showing where in the page the results are. In both cases it's super effective. But they are definitely still underused.
- indymike 6y ago
  1. Position of elevator (the little thumb you traditionally drag up or down) shows where I'm at relative to the beginning and end of the content. 2. Size of elevator in relation to the scrollbar tells me what percentage of the content is viewable (except when the size of the elevator becomes so small it makes it unusable). 3. Up and down buttons allow a simple way to bring the next or previous item into view. A lot of the hate of scrollbars comes from the web, where browser scrollbars could not be styled and didn't necessarily use the operating system's style. You could have a beautiful page be ruined by the default windows 3.11 style scrollbars in the browser.
  - ryanjshaw 6y ago
    Don't forget the near religious debate that is scrollbar snapback: skim a document backwards to review an earlier point, or forwards to determine if it's worth further time investment, and then release the mouse button outside the scroll area so that you can snapback and continue where you left off.
    - mekkkkkk 6y ago
      Somehow I have never discovered this feature. It's brilliant. Thanks!
    - shard 6y ago
      Where is this feature available or implemented? I just tried in Chrome and Powerpoint, neither has this feature.
      - recursive 6y ago
        I've never seen an app that didn't have that feature. Chrome included. I don't have powerpoint around to test at the moment. I've been using this feature since the 90s, and I'd miss it sorely if it were to be disappeared.
      - darkwinx 6y ago
        I try it just now and it works on Firefox & Window's File Explorer.
- alexvoda 6y ago
  Progress indication among others. But this is actually the only one retained by current simplified, slimmed and autohiding scrollbars. Here are others: -Discoverability: Is there more content? (Scrollbar enabled/disabled) How much? (Size of scrollbar) -Jumping to a location in the content -Skimming by hyperfast scrolling -Coasting by holding a scroll button pressed (this one is forever lost because the buttons have been abolished -Providing a space for bookmark indicators/in-page search result indicators There are probably other use cases too.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  My time is valuable. How much more of this do I have to read? That's the question scrollbars answer.
- Lopiolis 6y ago
  Scrollbars are all about physicality. We are creatures fundamentally rooted in a physical world and we think in ways that are deeply connected to spatial properties of the things we interact with. Scrollbars reflect many of these properties in a natural way on a limited 2D plane (as demonstrated by all the other comments). Mouse wheels aren't able to replace that function in any way. It's not their purpose.
- rdiddly 6y ago
  Scroll bars are a position getter and setter. Content is king, but kings have all sorts of people supporting them. In fact you can immediately tell who's the king not by how solitary and unencumbered he is but by how much clutter and commotion and how many attendants are around him. I realize I'm pushing the analogy too far.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Scroolbars are useful for making large coarse leaps within a page in an instant, while scroll wheels are good for accurate positioning over short distances. But please. just stop making everything flat ffs. On the GUIs of old, you knew straight away what you could interact with, while now, everything is so flat or hidden away that everything blends together, I have no idea what I can click on and what's static unless I used the app before. Best example, compare Windows 95/2000/XP to 8/10. Also, please stop with the auto-hiding bs. Sometimes I have to do a brute force sweep of the GUI with the cursor to trigger some elements to pop up from where they were hiding. WTF?! This would have made more sense 20-30 years ago when displays were running at 640x480 so real estate was precious, but now FullHD is the entry level norm.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > Scroolbars are useful for making large coarse leaps within a page in an instant, while scroll wheels are good for accurate positioning over short distances. That's funny. I use them in the exact opposite way. When I want exact positioning then I will use the scrollbar. When I want to scroll past pages and pages, I will just fling the scrollwheel.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - crysin 6y ago
    I think it's dependent on your mouse too. Personally I only use mice that have a click wheel, I absolutely hate free-spinning scroll wheels.
    - wolrah 6y ago
      IMO the best mice ever are the Logitech MX Revolution and MX Master series that have an electronic clutch on the wheel. It's clicky by default but if you whip it the clutch unlocks and you can traverse an entire EULA in 0.6 seconds. Some of their newer gaming mice have a half-ass version of this as well with a manual mechanical toggle.
mssdvd 6y ago
And at the same time modern ui have much bigger element to accommodate touchscreens.
userbinator 6y ago
Auto-hiding elements are one of the worst trends in "modern" UIs. I've had countless times where I had to waste a lot of effort trying to find controls that were hidden and only appeared if you hovered for long enough in the right place. It reminds me of this amusing comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293
- ant6n 6y ago
  Late-appearing elements are really annoying as well. They like appear under your mouse the moment you want to click on something.
  - smilekzs 6y ago
    Can second this. UI elements should not suddenly shift in place, unless interacted with or clearly communicated in advance (think a traffic light going yellow then red).
    - J-Kuhn 6y ago
      In the old days, the solution was simple - block the UI. But nowadays - a background thread will search for the stuff that should appear in the UI, and adds that directly when it found something. You can solve the problem by changing the mouse icon to the hourglass, blocking the UI for just enough time to not get any accidental clicks, and update it. As side effect, every update now takes some time - so you have to minimize the number of updates.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    I'm hoping that with websites having cumulative layout shift (https://web.dev/cls/ https://web.dev/cls/) metrics considered in Google search ranking this will become less common? (Discloseure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
dingaling 6y ago
What really irks me are the autohiding scrollbars, especially when working over a VNC connection and I have to wait for them to fade-in over a 3000km link Give me scrollbars and keep them visible please.
- sp332 6y ago
  Windows: Disable "Automatically hide scrollbars in Windows". Mac: General Preferences has an option "Show scroll bars" which you can set to "Always".
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    The Mac setting does not seem to work for all applications.
    - sp332 6y ago
      Right, anything that's just mimicking the default without checking this setting is going to be stuck. Also anything more custom, like websites that override scroll behavior.
      - inetknght 6y ago
        aka trash software ;)
      - kitsunesoba 6y ago
        Website scrollbars can probably be fixed with a userstyle and the Stylus extension, but with apps using electron or other non-system UI library you're just stuck with mimic-scrollbars (though there are exceptions like Qt which does honor scrollbar settings).
  - hulitu 6y ago
    > Windows: Disable "Automatically hide scrollbars in Windows". Does not work in all programs. > Mac: General Preferences has an option "Show scroll bars" which you can set to "Always".
5- 6y ago
i have been quite happy with a windows95 approximation for gtk: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 here's your comment in firefox with a glorious scrollbar: https://oshi.at/mLveVJ/scrollbar.png https://oshi.at/mLveVJ/scrollbar.png
suifbwish 6y ago
Have you spent much time talking to UI people? The position attracts a type of person that tends to ignore everything anyone around them says about what they like or dislike but then claim to know exactly what everyone wants in a UI
dredmorbius 6y ago
Who killed the scrollbar? https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511)

jart 6y ago

What is the use case for scroll bars, now that we have mouse wheels? Progress indication? My view is that content is king and any UI element that needlessly takes away space from the content needs to be destroyed.

ryukafalz 6y ago
Indicating where you are on the page, and indicating that content can be scrolled. (I've seen webpages where there's content "below the fold" but where it's extremely easy to miss that depending on your screen size.)
core-questions 6y ago
> now that we have mouse wheels? * Horizontal scrolling * Scrolling when using pen/touch input on non-touch UIs * Making it obvious that a content area is scrollable * Providing context into how much content is visible vs. hidden, and where you are in the document * Making it easy to scroll to a precise location without sitting there twiddling the wheel for minutes to go through something long > My view is that content is king and any UI element that needlessly takes away space from the content needs to be destroyed. Your view makes sense at 640x480. Maybe on a mobile screen. On a widescreen computer display, there's plenty of space for elegant UI controls.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tsukikage 6y ago
Being able to click to go directly some porportion of the way through then fine tune, instead of having to scroll through all the intervening space.
Swenrekcah 6y ago
I can’t figure out if this is parody or not. In case it isn’t, scroll bars are for quickly figuring out the scope, for quick positioning and for remembering where in the article things are.
zbrozek 6y ago
Progress indication and scrollability indication. I'd actually like to see scrollbars enhanced rather than diminished. So for example I would love to see indicators of headings or breaks or page bookmarks. The latter could even be clickable.
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  I agree! A lot of code editors are using them in a nice way to display version control info or errors/warnings. Chrome is using it to a small extent when searching using Ctrl-F, showing where in the page the results are. In both cases it's super effective. But they are definitely still underused.
indymike 6y ago
1. Position of elevator (the little thumb you traditionally drag up or down) shows where I'm at relative to the beginning and end of the content. 2. Size of elevator in relation to the scrollbar tells me what percentage of the content is viewable (except when the size of the elevator becomes so small it makes it unusable). 3. Up and down buttons allow a simple way to bring the next or previous item into view. A lot of the hate of scrollbars comes from the web, where browser scrollbars could not be styled and didn't necessarily use the operating system's style. You could have a beautiful page be ruined by the default windows 3.11 style scrollbars in the browser.
- ryanjshaw 6y ago
  Don't forget the near religious debate that is scrollbar snapback: skim a document backwards to review an earlier point, or forwards to determine if it's worth further time investment, and then release the mouse button outside the scroll area so that you can snapback and continue where you left off.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    Somehow I have never discovered this feature. It's brilliant. Thanks!
  - shard 6y ago
    Where is this feature available or implemented? I just tried in Chrome and Powerpoint, neither has this feature.
    - recursive 6y ago
      I've never seen an app that didn't have that feature. Chrome included. I don't have powerpoint around to test at the moment. I've been using this feature since the 90s, and I'd miss it sorely if it were to be disappeared.
    - darkwinx 6y ago
      I try it just now and it works on Firefox & Window's File Explorer.
alexvoda 6y ago
Progress indication among others. But this is actually the only one retained by current simplified, slimmed and autohiding scrollbars. Here are others: -Discoverability: Is there more content? (Scrollbar enabled/disabled) How much? (Size of scrollbar) -Jumping to a location in the content -Skimming by hyperfast scrolling -Coasting by holding a scroll button pressed (this one is forever lost because the buttons have been abolished -Providing a space for bookmark indicators/in-page search result indicators There are probably other use cases too.
anigbrowl 6y ago
My time is valuable. How much more of this do I have to read? That's the question scrollbars answer.
Lopiolis 6y ago
Scrollbars are all about physicality. We are creatures fundamentally rooted in a physical world and we think in ways that are deeply connected to spatial properties of the things we interact with. Scrollbars reflect many of these properties in a natural way on a limited 2D plane (as demonstrated by all the other comments). Mouse wheels aren't able to replace that function in any way. It's not their purpose.
rdiddly 6y ago
Scroll bars are a position getter and setter. Content is king, but kings have all sorts of people supporting them. In fact you can immediately tell who's the king not by how solitary and unencumbered he is but by how much clutter and commotion and how many attendants are around him. I realize I'm pushing the analogy too far.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

Scroolbars are useful for making large coarse leaps within a page in an instant, while scroll wheels are good for accurate positioning over short distances. But please. just stop making everything flat ffs. On the GUIs of old, you knew straight away what you could interact with, while now, everything is so flat or hidden away that everything blends together, I have no idea what I can click on and what's static unless I used the app before. Best example, compare Windows 95/2000/XP to 8/10. Also, please stop with the auto-hiding bs. Sometimes I have to do a brute force sweep of the GUI with the cursor to trigger some elements to pop up from where they were hiding. WTF?! This would have made more sense 20-30 years ago when displays were running at 640x480 so real estate was precious, but now FullHD is the entry level norm.

inetknght 6y ago
> Scroolbars are useful for making large coarse leaps within a page in an instant, while scroll wheels are good for accurate positioning over short distances. That's funny. I use them in the exact opposite way. When I want exact positioning then I will use the scrollbar. When I want to scroll past pages and pages, I will just fling the scrollwheel.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- crysin 6y ago
  I think it's dependent on your mouse too. Personally I only use mice that have a click wheel, I absolutely hate free-spinning scroll wheels.
  - wolrah 6y ago
    IMO the best mice ever are the Logitech MX Revolution and MX Master series that have an electronic clutch on the wheel. It's clicky by default but if you whip it the clutch unlocks and you can traverse an entire EULA in 0.6 seconds. Some of their newer gaming mice have a half-ass version of this as well with a manual mechanical toggle.

mssdvd 6y ago

And at the same time modern ui have much bigger element to accommodate touchscreens.

userbinator 6y ago

Auto-hiding elements are one of the worst trends in "modern" UIs. I've had countless times where I had to waste a lot of effort trying to find controls that were hidden and only appeared if you hovered for long enough in the right place. It reminds me of this amusing comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293

ant6n 6y ago
Late-appearing elements are really annoying as well. They like appear under your mouse the moment you want to click on something.
- smilekzs 6y ago
  Can second this. UI elements should not suddenly shift in place, unless interacted with or clearly communicated in advance (think a traffic light going yellow then red).
  - J-Kuhn 6y ago
    In the old days, the solution was simple - block the UI. But nowadays - a background thread will search for the stuff that should appear in the UI, and adds that directly when it found something. You can solve the problem by changing the mouse icon to the hourglass, blocking the UI for just enough time to not get any accidental clicks, and update it. As side effect, every update now takes some time - so you have to minimize the number of updates.
- jefftk 6y ago
  I'm hoping that with websites having cumulative layout shift (https://web.dev/cls/ https://web.dev/cls/) metrics considered in Google search ranking this will become less common? (Discloseure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

dingaling 6y ago

What really irks me are the autohiding scrollbars, especially when working over a VNC connection and I have to wait for them to fade-in over a 3000km link Give me scrollbars and keep them visible please.

sp332 6y ago
Windows: Disable "Automatically hide scrollbars in Windows". Mac: General Preferences has an option "Show scroll bars" which you can set to "Always".
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  The Mac setting does not seem to work for all applications.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Right, anything that's just mimicking the default without checking this setting is going to be stuck. Also anything more custom, like websites that override scroll behavior.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      aka trash software ;)
    - kitsunesoba 6y ago
      Website scrollbars can probably be fixed with a userstyle and the Stylus extension, but with apps using electron or other non-system UI library you're just stuck with mimic-scrollbars (though there are exceptions like Qt which does honor scrollbar settings).
- hulitu 6y ago
  > Windows: Disable "Automatically hide scrollbars in Windows". Does not work in all programs. > Mac: General Preferences has an option "Show scroll bars" which you can set to "Always".

5- 6y ago

i have been quite happy with a windows95 approximation for gtk: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 here's your comment in firefox with a glorious scrollbar: https://oshi.at/mLveVJ/scrollbar.png https://oshi.at/mLveVJ/scrollbar.png

suifbwish 6y ago

Have you spent much time talking to UI people? The position attracts a type of person that tends to ignore everything anyone around them says about what they like or dislike but then claim to know exactly what everyone wants in a UI

dredmorbius 6y ago

Who killed the scrollbar? https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511)