9 ms·

Need to is pretty strong. My company did UX testing on scroll bars and the overwhelming majority of our users on laptop scroll using the keyboard or the scroll

by Kranar 6y ago

Need to is pretty strong. My company did UX testing on scroll bars and the overwhelming majority of our users on laptop scroll using the keyboard or the scroll wheel (which on laptop is done using two finger dragging). I forget the exact number but it was less than 10% of users actually interact with the scrollbar.

simonw 6y ago
It's that 10% I'm worried about!
The_rationalist 6y ago
I am not interacting with the scrollbar but I regularly semi-incousoucly look at it as it give me crucial feedback of where I am.
bombcar 6y ago
Not interacting with it doesn't mean you don't use it - I glance at it to see if there is more content and where in it I am, even though I use the scroll wheel to move.
- Kranar 6y ago
  Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling.
  - eptcyka 6y ago
    For us, it was vocal Windows and Linux users that were asking for the scrollbars to be visible 100% of the time.
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      I would be one of those users. Hiding relevant information from the user is a bad idea. The computer is a tool that the user employs to accomplish a task. Do not hide tools from people who need to use the tools. A computer is a tool. It's not a design statement. It is not a canvas on which you paint. It is a toolbox full of tools a user needs to do work. Treat it as such, please.
  - jacobsenscott 6y ago
    This is how chrome does it to. The first time you scroll a little you see how long the page is. You don't need to keep seeing something that doesn't change. The funny thing is, if scroll bars never existed and someone tried to add them they would be considered terrible UI. You need to hit a tiny target with your mouse, that gets smaller and smaller in proportion to the size of the document. Missing the scroll bar, and hitting the gutter moves you to a random page with no simple way to get back. On small documents a small mouse movement scrolls by a small amount, but on a large document a small mouse movement can scroll way too fast. On some systems clicking the gutter is "page down". On others it is "move to this relative point in the document". With a mouse wheel or track pad the scroll speed is consistent no matter the size of the document, and the user can scroll faster or slower very easily. And you have a huge target - the entire document. There is no chance of paging when you mean to scroll. Scrollbars are obsolete.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      Is that how it works on macOS? If so, it's plainly broken. On Windows, and in every Linux GUI framework I can think of, clicking anywhere above or below the scroll thumb scrolls exactly one screen page up or down, for the very reason you've described. To navigate to an arbitrary spot, you're supposed to drag the thumb.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        It's an option on macOS. I think the default is the same.
      - Jedd 6y ago
        On GNU/Linux systems, at least, you middle-click to say 'go to this place'. I love my scrollbars, and I want them always visible. I don't use the mouse often, and I certainly don't want to have to use the mouse just to see context. Chrome implemented even worse nasties on GNU/Linux with scrollbars though, including forcing a snapback to original position if you drag the scrollbar but happen to move the mouse a few pixels too far left or right of the scrollbar [1]. Apparently that's how Microsoft Windows users do things. So now we have to as well. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191
  - pasc1878 6y ago
    Well hat is wrong vi wild look at the scrollbar to see if it was worth scrolling Or use the scrollbar to jump to the top, you are forcing me to do extra things
    - Kranar 6y ago
      The scrollbar is still there if you really want to use it, it's just not always visible. You can always move your mouse over to it and use it like always, but it's not going to appear unless it's being engaged in some way.
      - naikrovek 6y ago
        My eyes looking for the scrollbar counts as "being engaged" I would think. Do you hide text from a user unless it is being engaged?
        Kranar 6y ago
        In many cases yes we do that too. Text is hidden until the user performs an action, types something in, or hovers/focuses over an element (think tooltip).
        naikrovek 6y ago
        Why... (Tooltips I understand, as those are often something you only need a single time.) Yes I am a vocal opponent of hidden UI elements. Shame on me, I guess. If I were the innocent target of a firing squad, I would be a vocal opponent of the actions being taken against me there, too. "It's just a vocal minority. Fire." Being a vocal minority doesn't make me wrong. But it probably means I have thought about the problem space more than those who are not. At that point you put the A/B testing aside and you talk to the people and listen to them, and see if they are informed or if they are crackpots.
        Kranar 6y ago
        For the simple reason that we want to present to the user only the information that is necessary for them to accomplish their immediate goal, and nothing more. If you aren't scrolling, then the scrollbar provides little information in proportion to the amount of space it consumes. If you are scrolling, then the scrollbar is very important and it gets displayed. If you want to know where in a document you are, our experience is that users tend to already have a good idea of where in a document they are based on multiple cues including the fact that they are likely the ones who positioned themselves to that point in the document already. In the very rare moments where they need that cue, they can move their mouse (scrollbar appears when the mouse moves). As screens are a finite resource, by minimizing information that isn't necessary towards accomplishing a goal, we can maximize the information that is.
  - eckmLJE 6y ago
    I think the point is that I don't necessarily know by looking at a page that there is anything to scroll to without seeing the scroll bar. I may land on a page that contains enough content "above the fold" that it appears that's all the content available, so I navigate away without scrolling down to discover the additional content below.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      It's possible the first time you go to a page or use new software that this is true, but for desktop productivity software that is repeatedly used on a daily basis, you usually come to identify multiple cues to know if there is more content, so hiding one specific cue in a specific circumstance won't inhibit your ability to use our software. People's preferences about usability can change over the course of familiarizing themselves with your software, things that are friendly when they first use the software may end up being useless as they become more familiar with it. We obviously don't want to make our software hostile to new users, but for our purpose we want to ensure that people who are more familiar with our software have the optimal experience.
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    This makes no sense to me. Why can't I look at the scrollbar(s) and see where I am in the document without scrolling? Why is it important that this information be hidden from me? The scrollbar doesn't just let you know that you can scroll, it shows you the size of the content in relation to the size of your viewing window, and it shows you the location of the viewing window within the overall content, and it does this at a glance. A scrollbar is an extremely efficient use of screen space. Don't hide things from the user that provide the user with information.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      You can do that to, moving your mouse over the window reveals the scrollbars, as does scrolling. The reason we hide the scrollbars is because scrollbars are not the one and only consideration that we make when designing a page, information density also matters and so we have to weigh these options together and conduct user testing to see what the impact of various design decisions are. Certainly there is a vocal minority of people who are dead set that scrollbars must always be visible, and we can respect their choice, but we also have to optimize our software for the majority of our users who would rather see more content. The balance we went with was if you want to see the scrollbar, you need to perform an action that engages it, which is moving your mouse over the scrollable area, or performing a scroll operation. We have other things too that we have to consider, like until the mouse approaches the scrollbar it appears very thin and when the mouse is within a certain distance it expands to allow it to moved. Will every single user like this approach? No of course not. But based on our user testing, it optimized for metrics that we care about.
      - toast0 6y ago
        > You can do that to, moving your mouse over the window reveals the scrollbars, as does scrolling. The problem with revealing scrollbars it that they then obscure whatever was shown there before. (Or reflow the page, dear god). If you use that space, well you can't see it when you're scrolling; and if you don't use that space why not show the scrollbar the whole time?
      - gsich 6y ago
  - CRConrad 6y ago
    > Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling. But how do I know I need to start scrolling to see the scrollbar, when I can't see the scrollbar so I know there is anything to scroll to?
- SamBam 6y ago
  Not only that, but seeing the scrollbar tells you that there is more content that you can't see. This is especially useful if you made your modern front page super fancy so that the above-the-fold space looks like a tidy complete package. Or if you have a sub-panel containing a list of something. I make web sites for students. I've frequently found that, if it's necessary to have a scrollable list of something, I need to dynamically change the height of stuff so that the list starts with some list item partially peeking out over the fold, otherwise half the users with hidden scrollbars won't know to scroll and find more stuff.
  - HeavyStorm 6y ago
    Heck, I'm not a student and I'm fooled by the lack of clear indication of additional content.
  - bombcar 6y ago
    Modern web pages get me on this every time - I filed multiple bugs on our new site because there was so much whitespace that I didn't realize there was more content below the fold. I suppose this has made "above the fold" more valuable, or perhaps mobile devices show so little content that everyone has to scroll ... I just realized that the "mobile-first" web has made using a computer with large screens a super-power. I have 17m pixels (and many more if I wasn't using Retina-like resolutions to get crisper text) - others I work with are stuck at barely over a million pixels.
- bakatubas 6y ago
  In addition, it tells folks how much available content. And you can eyeball an action like “go to approximately 80% down the page.”
  - SilasX 6y ago
    Don't worry, they're killing that too, with infiniscroll! Seriously, that's another thing I hate about infiniscroll: if I come to a giant list where I know I've looked at the top 10% of, it makes it impossible to jump down approximately 10%, or otherwise to a region I know I haven't explored. Edit: And, of course, if you do want to go n% down, there's no choice but to page down, wait, page down, wait, page down ...
    - bombcar 6y ago
      The #1 thing I hate about infiniscroll (and I actually kinda like it when I'm vegetating and pouring crappy content directly into my eyes) is that clicking on something and then hitting back almost always takes you back to the top of the list; at which point I bounce out and never return.
      - SilasX 6y ago
        Agh, yes, I forgot to mention the worst part! However, that one I blame the browsers for. I distinctly remember the back button working differently, where it would reliably take you to the exact state of the previous page, just as if you had opened the current link a new tab and closed it, but it changed at some point, and most sites do something that destroys the state when you back into them as well.
        gsich 6y ago
        Opera did that. The back button was instant, no page reload.
        SilasX 6y ago
        So did Firefox, in my recollection. That’s one thing I liked about it. But it changed at some point.
reaperducer 6y ago
I forget the exact number but it was less than 10% of users actually interact with the scrollbar. What industry are you in where you can ignore 10% of the user base?
- Kranar 6y ago
  Quantitative finance where information density is of the utmost importance and our interest isn't in getting the most number of users, it's retaining the most skilled users. For our application we have many tables of data that are narrow in size, maybe two or three columns, and having a scrollbar constantly displayed takes up valuable screen real estate that could be used to display more tables. It's also a fallacy to think that because we optimize our application for 90% of users, that we end up losing 10% of them. People are not static automatons that make binary decisions about using your product strictly on the basis of how scrollbars function. People are fairly flexible and can adapt, get used to new things, and balance many different factors against one another when making choices.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Interesting! This goes against the rule of thumb where if 5% of attendees are vegetarian you serve vegetarian and omnivores will adjust to it, while if you served the omnivore option the vegetarians would likely go hungry (more likely go find something else nearby if possible).
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      > This goes against the rule of thumb where if 5% of attendees are vegetarian you serve vegetarian and omnivores will adjust to it I've never heard this before. 5% sounds incredibly low, I would think it would need to be 25% before omnivores would be okay with it. If somewhere isn't serving meat, I don't want to be served there.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      No because it's not as extreme as that. What you are talking about something that Taleb talks about which is a kind of minority rule [1] where for example kosher people will not eat food that isn't kosher, but non-kosher people will eat food that is kosher and so the end result is that Coca-cola, Pepsi, etc... all ensure their products are kosher even though only like 1 percent of their customers care about it. That is a very important principle in UI design and we certainly adhere to it and take it into account, but this has nothing to do with that. We're talking about scrollbars here, and unfortunately the people who prefer to always see a scrollbar are not going to ditch your product strictly on that one single criteria. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
627467 6y ago
I'm amazed that "less than 10% of users" is considered NOT a "pretty strong need" for ux.
lhorie 6y ago
Would be curious to see the results controlling for page size and for type of task. For example, I normally don't use the scrollbar... until I do (because I'm scrubbing a huge page looking for some specific thing). And then I get annoyed that grabbing the darn scrollbar handle with a touchpad feels like a dumb peekaboo game.
garmaine 6y ago
Not all mice have scroll wheels.
- munk-a 6y ago
  Ah I see you don't work at CD Projekt Red - where they decided to hard-bind "use" in Cyperpunk 2077 to the middle mouse button which many mice have problems detecting due to prioritizing wheel smoothness over clickability. My partner had to borrow a different mouse to make it through the tutorial - after which it allows you to rebind the button. This is a very underappreciated point.
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    The game doesn't let you rebind keys until after the tutorial? That's insane. So anyone who needs some unconventional control setup cannot play the game. Not to mention the tutorial is supposed to be the part that lets you test out the settings and familiarise yourself with the basics. Those scrollwheels you described are definitely part of the problem too, though. I had the pleasure of using one like that and a few minutes were enough to generate the urge to throw it in the bin. It's already hard enough to find a decent mouse without worrying about the scrollwheel.
- gsich 6y ago
  Name a few that were produced in the last 5 years.
nonameiguess 6y ago
As a user of a laptop, the reason I use arrow keys to scroll is because of infinite scroll. Websites with that feature are effectively unusable via the scrollbar because it gets hijacked as you're in the middle of using it, move from 50% to 25%, and suddenly you're pressing down on 50% of double the original lines and get jerked past a quarter of the open entries in your feed. It's a terrible experience that forces you to use arrows or the scroll wheel as a workaround, not because that is an actual preference.
markrages 6y ago
My mouse has no scroll wheel (it's a trackball) and there are some websites that I basically cannot use.
- smoe 6y ago
  I never used a trackball, but I would have expected there to be either a button on the mouse or some key you could hold to turn the ball into scroll mode?
  - dingaling 6y ago
    Some high-end trackballs have scroll rings but every one I've used for the past 30 years just has the standard two click buttons
    - Kranar 6y ago
      A search on Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg for trackball and sorting the results from lowest to highest price all include scrolling buttons, either by touch, scroll ring, scroll wheel. The dirt cheapest option I could find for 20 bucks, the Logitech Trackman Trackball has something called WebScroll buttons and other cheap Logitech trackballs use SetPoint. It appears, at least from all the evidence I can gather, that trackballs without a scroll option is the exception. https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-8&id=pcat17071&iht=y&intl=nosplash&keys=keys&ks=960&list=n&sc=Global&sp=%2Bcurrentprice%20skuidsaas&st=trackball&type=page&usc=All%20Categories https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-... https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Two, not even three? Yikes.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  If you're on a Mac with a trackball, the scroll bars would show up all the time the same way they would if you were using a mouse. Unless the trackball says it has a scrollable function to the OS, you'd see the bar.
efwfwef 6y ago
That is because most pages are short... Now when you deal with long pages you get infuriated if you can't use the scrollbar directly.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rasz 6y ago
You didnt run eye tracking experiments tho, did you?
- Kranar 6y ago
  We absolutely did. As I indicated in another reply, we develop quantitative trading software and we use our own software internally as a trading firm. While we're not perfect by any means, we take UX research quite seriously.
alpaca128 6y ago
> less than 10% of users actually interact with the scrollbar. I wonder whether this was tested with the average modern website or a well-designed UI. Or on a desktop, which usually does not come with a touchpad. The main reason I rarely drag the scrollbar is that it's become a total pain: they're generally hard to hit with the mouse because they tend to get narrower every year(Fitts' law anyone?), they auto-hide or even when not hidden have such a low contrast that I have a hard time making out the edges, or they're simply in a half-broken state thanks to convoluted web design. All those things basically go against the whole purpose of scrollbars. Please don't mess with the scrollbar and scrolling in general. It provides no benefit and breaks UX in ways nobody can predict. With so many operating systems, user interfaces and browser plugins it's often trivial to make many websites near unusable because they were built by people who think they know better than some boring standard.
- Kranar 6y ago
  To be honest most of our tests for UI components are fairly abstract which has pros and cons. The way we test UIs is by creating multiple prototypes that differ in various ways (hidden vs. not hidden scrollbar), giving the user time to familiarize themselves with the prototype, and then asking them to perform a series of tasks. For example after asking them to familiarize themselves with an abstract spreadsheet like software, we might ask them to find a specific data item and we check how they go about it. Or we might give them a form and ask them to fill it out and we see their usage. Or we might present to them a large set of changing data, ask them to mentally keep track of any numbers that change to be between 100 and 200, and after 2 minutes we ask them how many numbers did they see and measure that, then we change the UI (increase information density) and have them repeat it and see what the effect is. After we give this to a bunch of our users, for our specific business, we split users up according to a bunch of criteria including people who performed the task the fastest in terms of time, performed it using the fewest actions, in terms of precision, sometimes eye tracking is important, and a host of things. Now the next thing I will admit people will find distasteful but for our industry it matters a lot... we then design the software according to how the "optimal" users accomplished the task. Sometimes it's possible most users accomplished the task one way, but the optimal users accomplished it another way... in many cases we will then design our software for the optimal users even if they are a minority. For this case we were predominantly interested in information density and the scrollbar was taking up about 10% of the width of a table (on 96 DPI the scrollbar is I think around 15px and the window as a whole is about 150px). The optimal users, and the vast majority of users overall tasked to find data in a table as well as the ones who did best in terms of keeping track of changing numbers, don't move the mouse over a scrollbar and use it directly. I don't have all the details off the top of my head although I could ask the UX researcher about it if there's a lot of interest, but I seem to recall that the small number of users who did drag the scrollbar are "clumsier" and slower. Since I work in quantitative finance, it's better for our business to design our software to appeal to the so called optimal user and try to find ways to get the majority of our users to adopt more optimal usage patterns. That means if we can get our users to prefer using more precise ways of using our software through familiarity, training, or other means, we'd rather get them to do that instead of trying to design our software to accommodate usage patterns that they are currently comfortable with, but that we measure as being suboptimal. None of this is perfect, we don't always get it right, but we do care about it and put quite a lot of effort into it and have seen a lot of substantive improvements in our users that translate to substantial earnings for our trading firm.
codemac 6y ago
> (which on laptop is done using two finger dragging) How did you determine this difference? I use a mouse with my laptop, because work only gives us laptops.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I think it's pretty rare to get a desktop these days. I know I've received laptops for my work for vendors for the past 12 years at least.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
90% of users don't use the scrollbar on laptop/desktop? I find that hard to believe unless your apps don't really need a scrollbar to see all the options.
kdmytro 6y ago
Did you us eye tracking to check that the users never look at the scrollbar?

by Kranar 6y ago

simonw 6y ago

It's that 10% I'm worried about!

The_rationalist 6y ago

I am not interacting with the scrollbar but I regularly semi-incousoucly look at it as it give me crucial feedback of where I am.

bombcar 6y ago

Not interacting with it doesn't mean you don't use it - I glance at it to see if there is more content and where in it I am, even though I use the scroll wheel to move.

Kranar 6y ago
Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling.
- eptcyka 6y ago
  For us, it was vocal Windows and Linux users that were asking for the scrollbars to be visible 100% of the time.
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    I would be one of those users. Hiding relevant information from the user is a bad idea. The computer is a tool that the user employs to accomplish a task. Do not hide tools from people who need to use the tools. A computer is a tool. It's not a design statement. It is not a canvas on which you paint. It is a toolbox full of tools a user needs to do work. Treat it as such, please.
- jacobsenscott 6y ago
  This is how chrome does it to. The first time you scroll a little you see how long the page is. You don't need to keep seeing something that doesn't change. The funny thing is, if scroll bars never existed and someone tried to add them they would be considered terrible UI. You need to hit a tiny target with your mouse, that gets smaller and smaller in proportion to the size of the document. Missing the scroll bar, and hitting the gutter moves you to a random page with no simple way to get back. On small documents a small mouse movement scrolls by a small amount, but on a large document a small mouse movement can scroll way too fast. On some systems clicking the gutter is "page down". On others it is "move to this relative point in the document". With a mouse wheel or track pad the scroll speed is consistent no matter the size of the document, and the user can scroll faster or slower very easily. And you have a huge target - the entire document. There is no chance of paging when you mean to scroll. Scrollbars are obsolete.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Is that how it works on macOS? If so, it's plainly broken. On Windows, and in every Linux GUI framework I can think of, clicking anywhere above or below the scroll thumb scrolls exactly one screen page up or down, for the very reason you've described. To navigate to an arbitrary spot, you're supposed to drag the thumb.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      It's an option on macOS. I think the default is the same.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      On GNU/Linux systems, at least, you middle-click to say 'go to this place'. I love my scrollbars, and I want them always visible. I don't use the mouse often, and I certainly don't want to have to use the mouse just to see context. Chrome implemented even worse nasties on GNU/Linux with scrollbars though, including forcing a snapback to original position if you drag the scrollbar but happen to move the mouse a few pixels too far left or right of the scrollbar [1]. Apparently that's how Microsoft Windows users do things. So now we have to as well. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191
- pasc1878 6y ago
  Well hat is wrong vi wild look at the scrollbar to see if it was worth scrolling Or use the scrollbar to jump to the top, you are forcing me to do extra things
  - Kranar 6y ago
    The scrollbar is still there if you really want to use it, it's just not always visible. You can always move your mouse over to it and use it like always, but it's not going to appear unless it's being engaged in some way.
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      My eyes looking for the scrollbar counts as "being engaged" I would think. Do you hide text from a user unless it is being engaged?
      - Kranar 6y ago
        In many cases yes we do that too. Text is hidden until the user performs an action, types something in, or hovers/focuses over an element (think tooltip).
        naikrovek 6y ago
        Why... (Tooltips I understand, as those are often something you only need a single time.) Yes I am a vocal opponent of hidden UI elements. Shame on me, I guess. If I were the innocent target of a firing squad, I would be a vocal opponent of the actions being taken against me there, too. "It's just a vocal minority. Fire." Being a vocal minority doesn't make me wrong. But it probably means I have thought about the problem space more than those who are not. At that point you put the A/B testing aside and you talk to the people and listen to them, and see if they are informed or if they are crackpots.
        Kranar 6y ago
        For the simple reason that we want to present to the user only the information that is necessary for them to accomplish their immediate goal, and nothing more. If you aren't scrolling, then the scrollbar provides little information in proportion to the amount of space it consumes. If you are scrolling, then the scrollbar is very important and it gets displayed. If you want to know where in a document you are, our experience is that users tend to already have a good idea of where in a document they are based on multiple cues including the fact that they are likely the ones who positioned themselves to that point in the document already. In the very rare moments where they need that cue, they can move their mouse (scrollbar appears when the mouse moves). As screens are a finite resource, by minimizing information that isn't necessary towards accomplishing a goal, we can maximize the information that is.
- eckmLJE 6y ago
  I think the point is that I don't necessarily know by looking at a page that there is anything to scroll to without seeing the scroll bar. I may land on a page that contains enough content "above the fold" that it appears that's all the content available, so I navigate away without scrolling down to discover the additional content below.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    It's possible the first time you go to a page or use new software that this is true, but for desktop productivity software that is repeatedly used on a daily basis, you usually come to identify multiple cues to know if there is more content, so hiding one specific cue in a specific circumstance won't inhibit your ability to use our software. People's preferences about usability can change over the course of familiarizing themselves with your software, things that are friendly when they first use the software may end up being useless as they become more familiar with it. We obviously don't want to make our software hostile to new users, but for our purpose we want to ensure that people who are more familiar with our software have the optimal experience.
- naikrovek 6y ago
  This makes no sense to me. Why can't I look at the scrollbar(s) and see where I am in the document without scrolling? Why is it important that this information be hidden from me? The scrollbar doesn't just let you know that you can scroll, it shows you the size of the content in relation to the size of your viewing window, and it shows you the location of the viewing window within the overall content, and it does this at a glance. A scrollbar is an extremely efficient use of screen space. Don't hide things from the user that provide the user with information.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    You can do that to, moving your mouse over the window reveals the scrollbars, as does scrolling. The reason we hide the scrollbars is because scrollbars are not the one and only consideration that we make when designing a page, information density also matters and so we have to weigh these options together and conduct user testing to see what the impact of various design decisions are. Certainly there is a vocal minority of people who are dead set that scrollbars must always be visible, and we can respect their choice, but we also have to optimize our software for the majority of our users who would rather see more content. The balance we went with was if you want to see the scrollbar, you need to perform an action that engages it, which is moving your mouse over the scrollable area, or performing a scroll operation. We have other things too that we have to consider, like until the mouse approaches the scrollbar it appears very thin and when the mouse is within a certain distance it expands to allow it to moved. Will every single user like this approach? No of course not. But based on our user testing, it optimized for metrics that we care about.
    - toast0 6y ago
      > You can do that to, moving your mouse over the window reveals the scrollbars, as does scrolling. The problem with revealing scrollbars it that they then obscure whatever was shown there before. (Or reflow the page, dear god). If you use that space, well you can't see it when you're scrolling; and if you don't use that space why not show the scrollbar the whole time?
    - gsich 6y ago
- CRConrad 6y ago
  > Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling. But how do I know I need to start scrolling to see the scrollbar, when I can't see the scrollbar so I know there is anything to scroll to?
SamBam 6y ago
Not only that, but seeing the scrollbar tells you that there is more content that you can't see. This is especially useful if you made your modern front page super fancy so that the above-the-fold space looks like a tidy complete package. Or if you have a sub-panel containing a list of something. I make web sites for students. I've frequently found that, if it's necessary to have a scrollable list of something, I need to dynamically change the height of stuff so that the list starts with some list item partially peeking out over the fold, otherwise half the users with hidden scrollbars won't know to scroll and find more stuff.
- HeavyStorm 6y ago
  Heck, I'm not a student and I'm fooled by the lack of clear indication of additional content.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Modern web pages get me on this every time - I filed multiple bugs on our new site because there was so much whitespace that I didn't realize there was more content below the fold. I suppose this has made "above the fold" more valuable, or perhaps mobile devices show so little content that everyone has to scroll ... I just realized that the "mobile-first" web has made using a computer with large screens a super-power. I have 17m pixels (and many more if I wasn't using Retina-like resolutions to get crisper text) - others I work with are stuck at barely over a million pixels.
bakatubas 6y ago
In addition, it tells folks how much available content. And you can eyeball an action like “go to approximately 80% down the page.”
- SilasX 6y ago
  Don't worry, they're killing that too, with infiniscroll! Seriously, that's another thing I hate about infiniscroll: if I come to a giant list where I know I've looked at the top 10% of, it makes it impossible to jump down approximately 10%, or otherwise to a region I know I haven't explored. Edit: And, of course, if you do want to go n% down, there's no choice but to page down, wait, page down, wait, page down ...
  - bombcar 6y ago
    The #1 thing I hate about infiniscroll (and I actually kinda like it when I'm vegetating and pouring crappy content directly into my eyes) is that clicking on something and then hitting back almost always takes you back to the top of the list; at which point I bounce out and never return.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Agh, yes, I forgot to mention the worst part! However, that one I blame the browsers for. I distinctly remember the back button working differently, where it would reliably take you to the exact state of the previous page, just as if you had opened the current link a new tab and closed it, but it changed at some point, and most sites do something that destroys the state when you back into them as well.
      - gsich 6y ago
        Opera did that. The back button was instant, no page reload.
        SilasX 6y ago
        So did Firefox, in my recollection. That’s one thing I liked about it. But it changed at some point.

reaperducer 6y ago

I forget the exact number but it was less than 10% of users actually interact with the scrollbar. What industry are you in where you can ignore 10% of the user base?

Kranar 6y ago
Quantitative finance where information density is of the utmost importance and our interest isn't in getting the most number of users, it's retaining the most skilled users. For our application we have many tables of data that are narrow in size, maybe two or three columns, and having a scrollbar constantly displayed takes up valuable screen real estate that could be used to display more tables. It's also a fallacy to think that because we optimize our application for 90% of users, that we end up losing 10% of them. People are not static automatons that make binary decisions about using your product strictly on the basis of how scrollbars function. People are fairly flexible and can adapt, get used to new things, and balance many different factors against one another when making choices.
- mc32 6y ago
  Interesting! This goes against the rule of thumb where if 5% of attendees are vegetarian you serve vegetarian and omnivores will adjust to it, while if you served the omnivore option the vegetarians would likely go hungry (more likely go find something else nearby if possible).
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    > This goes against the rule of thumb where if 5% of attendees are vegetarian you serve vegetarian and omnivores will adjust to it I've never heard this before. 5% sounds incredibly low, I would think it would need to be 25% before omnivores would be okay with it. If somewhere isn't serving meat, I don't want to be served there.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    No because it's not as extreme as that. What you are talking about something that Taleb talks about which is a kind of minority rule [1] where for example kosher people will not eat food that isn't kosher, but non-kosher people will eat food that is kosher and so the end result is that Coca-cola, Pepsi, etc... all ensure their products are kosher even though only like 1 percent of their customers care about it. That is a very important principle in UI design and we certainly adhere to it and take it into account, but this has nothing to do with that. We're talking about scrollbars here, and unfortunately the people who prefer to always see a scrollbar are not going to ditch your product strictly on that one single criteria. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

627467 6y ago

I'm amazed that "less than 10% of users" is considered NOT a "pretty strong need" for ux.

lhorie 6y ago

Would be curious to see the results controlling for page size and for type of task. For example, I normally don't use the scrollbar... until I do (because I'm scrubbing a huge page looking for some specific thing). And then I get annoyed that grabbing the darn scrollbar handle with a touchpad feels like a dumb peekaboo game.

garmaine 6y ago

Not all mice have scroll wheels.

munk-a 6y ago
Ah I see you don't work at CD Projekt Red - where they decided to hard-bind "use" in Cyperpunk 2077 to the middle mouse button which many mice have problems detecting due to prioritizing wheel smoothness over clickability. My partner had to borrow a different mouse to make it through the tutorial - after which it allows you to rebind the button. This is a very underappreciated point.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  The game doesn't let you rebind keys until after the tutorial? That's insane. So anyone who needs some unconventional control setup cannot play the game. Not to mention the tutorial is supposed to be the part that lets you test out the settings and familiarise yourself with the basics. Those scrollwheels you described are definitely part of the problem too, though. I had the pleasure of using one like that and a few minutes were enough to generate the urge to throw it in the bin. It's already hard enough to find a decent mouse without worrying about the scrollwheel.
gsich 6y ago
Name a few that were produced in the last 5 years.

nonameiguess 6y ago

As a user of a laptop, the reason I use arrow keys to scroll is because of infinite scroll. Websites with that feature are effectively unusable via the scrollbar because it gets hijacked as you're in the middle of using it, move from 50% to 25%, and suddenly you're pressing down on 50% of double the original lines and get jerked past a quarter of the open entries in your feed. It's a terrible experience that forces you to use arrows or the scroll wheel as a workaround, not because that is an actual preference.

markrages 6y ago

My mouse has no scroll wheel (it's a trackball) and there are some websites that I basically cannot use.

smoe 6y ago
I never used a trackball, but I would have expected there to be either a button on the mouse or some key you could hold to turn the ball into scroll mode?
- dingaling 6y ago
  Some high-end trackballs have scroll rings but every one I've used for the past 30 years just has the standard two click buttons
  - Kranar 6y ago
    A search on Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg for trackball and sorting the results from lowest to highest price all include scrolling buttons, either by touch, scroll ring, scroll wheel. The dirt cheapest option I could find for 20 bucks, the Logitech Trackman Trackball has something called WebScroll buttons and other cheap Logitech trackballs use SetPoint. It appears, at least from all the evidence I can gather, that trackballs without a scroll option is the exception. https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-8&id=pcat17071&iht=y&intl=nosplash&keys=keys&ks=960&list=n&sc=Global&sp=%2Bcurrentprice%20skuidsaas&st=trackball&type=page&usc=All%20Categories https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-... https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=trackball&Order=1
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Two, not even three? Yikes.
dkonofalski 6y ago
If you're on a Mac with a trackball, the scroll bars would show up all the time the same way they would if you were using a mouse. Unless the trackball says it has a scrollable function to the OS, you'd see the bar.

efwfwef 6y ago

That is because most pages are short... Now when you deal with long pages you get infuriated if you can't use the scrollbar directly.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rasz 6y ago

You didnt run eye tracking experiments tho, did you?

Kranar 6y ago
We absolutely did. As I indicated in another reply, we develop quantitative trading software and we use our own software internally as a trading firm. While we're not perfect by any means, we take UX research quite seriously.

alpaca128 6y ago

> less than 10% of users actually interact with the scrollbar. I wonder whether this was tested with the average modern website or a well-designed UI. Or on a desktop, which usually does not come with a touchpad. The main reason I rarely drag the scrollbar is that it's become a total pain: they're generally hard to hit with the mouse because they tend to get narrower every year(Fitts' law anyone?), they auto-hide or even when not hidden have such a low contrast that I have a hard time making out the edges, or they're simply in a half-broken state thanks to convoluted web design. All those things basically go against the whole purpose of scrollbars. Please don't mess with the scrollbar and scrolling in general. It provides no benefit and breaks UX in ways nobody can predict. With so many operating systems, user interfaces and browser plugins it's often trivial to make many websites near unusable because they were built by people who think they know better than some boring standard.

Kranar 6y ago
To be honest most of our tests for UI components are fairly abstract which has pros and cons. The way we test UIs is by creating multiple prototypes that differ in various ways (hidden vs. not hidden scrollbar), giving the user time to familiarize themselves with the prototype, and then asking them to perform a series of tasks. For example after asking them to familiarize themselves with an abstract spreadsheet like software, we might ask them to find a specific data item and we check how they go about it. Or we might give them a form and ask them to fill it out and we see their usage. Or we might present to them a large set of changing data, ask them to mentally keep track of any numbers that change to be between 100 and 200, and after 2 minutes we ask them how many numbers did they see and measure that, then we change the UI (increase information density) and have them repeat it and see what the effect is. After we give this to a bunch of our users, for our specific business, we split users up according to a bunch of criteria including people who performed the task the fastest in terms of time, performed it using the fewest actions, in terms of precision, sometimes eye tracking is important, and a host of things. Now the next thing I will admit people will find distasteful but for our industry it matters a lot... we then design the software according to how the "optimal" users accomplished the task. Sometimes it's possible most users accomplished the task one way, but the optimal users accomplished it another way... in many cases we will then design our software for the optimal users even if they are a minority. For this case we were predominantly interested in information density and the scrollbar was taking up about 10% of the width of a table (on 96 DPI the scrollbar is I think around 15px and the window as a whole is about 150px). The optimal users, and the vast majority of users overall tasked to find data in a table as well as the ones who did best in terms of keeping track of changing numbers, don't move the mouse over a scrollbar and use it directly. I don't have all the details off the top of my head although I could ask the UX researcher about it if there's a lot of interest, but I seem to recall that the small number of users who did drag the scrollbar are "clumsier" and slower. Since I work in quantitative finance, it's better for our business to design our software to appeal to the so called optimal user and try to find ways to get the majority of our users to adopt more optimal usage patterns. That means if we can get our users to prefer using more precise ways of using our software through familiarity, training, or other means, we'd rather get them to do that instead of trying to design our software to accommodate usage patterns that they are currently comfortable with, but that we measure as being suboptimal. None of this is perfect, we don't always get it right, but we do care about it and put quite a lot of effort into it and have seen a lot of substantive improvements in our users that translate to substantial earnings for our trading firm.

codemac 6y ago

> (which on laptop is done using two finger dragging) How did you determine this difference? I use a mouse with my laptop, because work only gives us laptops.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
I think it's pretty rare to get a desktop these days. I know I've received laptops for my work for vendors for the past 12 years at least.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

90% of users don't use the scrollbar on laptop/desktop? I find that hard to believe unless your apps don't really need a scrollbar to see all the options.

kdmytro 6y ago

Did you us eye tracking to check that the users never look at the scrollbar?