6 ms·

Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling.

by Kranar 6y ago

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
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      Windows does it, but "too far" is actually closer to 500 pixels, not "a few". You'll certainly never run into it in normal use. I actually find it useful because I can refer to two places in the same document without losing my scroll position (I don't think that's its intended purpose, but it works).
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    macOS can be set to either behave the way you're describing when you click above or below the scroll thumb, or to navigate to that point in the document when you do that (e.g., click 80% of the way down the scrollbar and jump to the 80% point in the document).
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Scrollbars aren't meant to be clicked ever since the invention of the mouse wheel. Their primary job is to tell you that you can scroll, because there's more content. If you hide the scrollbar until you scroll, then users often won't scroll, because they won't know there is more to see. The secondary job of the scrollbar is to tell you where you are in relation to the content, and how much of it there is, relative to what you see on your screen. Both of these roles are best fulfilled when the indicator is persistently visible. You could make scrollbars transparent to clicks and they'd do 90% of their job already. The ability to click on them to quickly jump to a desired location is a useful bonus, even if not frequently used these days. What matters is that they're visible.
  - Kranar 6y ago
    >If you hide the scrollbar until you scroll, then users often won't scroll, because they won't know there is more to see. Do you have evidence for this, even if it's anecdotal? To be honest a statement like that sounds like a hypothesis and a reasonable hypothesis, but I am not joking when I say when we did user testing, it was absolutely never the case that someone actually didn't scroll because they didn't see a scroll bar. Now we didn't test specifically for that but I'd be surprised if a controlled experiment testing that hypothesis concluded that people will actually just never bother to scroll unless they explicitly see a scrollbar. Scrolling is actually a very natural thing that people do without the need to visibly see a scrollbar. Using a dedicated scroll button or gesture is a very cheap and consequence free action to perform. I'd be very surprised if you have data that contradicts this and indicates that an actual human being would simply not scroll because the only visual cue/indicator that people use is a scrollbar, rather than the multitude of context specific information available to indicate whether more content is available.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I only have anecdotes to support this, but unless I'm a really weird outlier, I'd say it's indicative: - Almost every discussion on Apple and scrollbars I see on-line has someone telling a story of how they didn't realize some app was scrollable, because its visual grid happened to align perfectly with viewport size of their iPhone/iPad; - I got caught myself by this a few times on PC, where the design of the page looked complete, scollbars were hidden, and I didn't realize I could scroll down; - I've been the person to tell some confused non-technical people that they could scroll down to see more, because the layout of a webpage did not make this obvious, and without a scrollbar visible, they were just puzzled why there's so little information on the screen. Plural of anecdote is not data, so I'm open to the possibility I may have just had peculiar luck, but I think it's fair to assign a low prior to that. > that an actual human being would simply not scroll because the only visual cue/indicator that people use is a scrollbar, rather than the multitude of context specific information available to indicate whether more content is available What these cases had in common was that there was insufficient context-specific information available to make it apparent the content is scrollable (and - anecdotally, again - in my experience, non-tech-savvy people don't have the nervous tick of just randomly scrolling on the wheel, to check if it does something). Sometimes, the only such contextual information was the feeling you got after reading everything on the page, that something is missing. But if your users have to reach that point to figure out they can try scrolling, the UI failed at its job, and wasted them a minute of their lives.
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?

Yes, the solution we went with, which Apple also uses, is to display the scrollbar while scrolling.

by 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
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Windows does it, but "too far" is actually closer to 500 pixels, not "a few". You'll certainly never run into it in normal use. I actually find it useful because I can refer to two places in the same document without losing my scroll position (I don't think that's its intended purpose, but it works).
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  macOS can be set to either behave the way you're describing when you click above or below the scroll thumb, or to navigate to that point in the document when you do that (e.g., click 80% of the way down the scrollbar and jump to the 80% point in the document).
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Scrollbars aren't meant to be clicked ever since the invention of the mouse wheel. Their primary job is to tell you that you can scroll, because there's more content. If you hide the scrollbar until you scroll, then users often won't scroll, because they won't know there is more to see. The secondary job of the scrollbar is to tell you where you are in relation to the content, and how much of it there is, relative to what you see on your screen. Both of these roles are best fulfilled when the indicator is persistently visible. You could make scrollbars transparent to clicks and they'd do 90% of their job already. The ability to click on them to quickly jump to a desired location is a useful bonus, even if not frequently used these days. What matters is that they're visible.
- Kranar 6y ago
  >If you hide the scrollbar until you scroll, then users often won't scroll, because they won't know there is more to see. Do you have evidence for this, even if it's anecdotal? To be honest a statement like that sounds like a hypothesis and a reasonable hypothesis, but I am not joking when I say when we did user testing, it was absolutely never the case that someone actually didn't scroll because they didn't see a scroll bar. Now we didn't test specifically for that but I'd be surprised if a controlled experiment testing that hypothesis concluded that people will actually just never bother to scroll unless they explicitly see a scrollbar. Scrolling is actually a very natural thing that people do without the need to visibly see a scrollbar. Using a dedicated scroll button or gesture is a very cheap and consequence free action to perform. I'd be very surprised if you have data that contradicts this and indicates that an actual human being would simply not scroll because the only visual cue/indicator that people use is a scrollbar, rather than the multitude of context specific information available to indicate whether more content is available.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I only have anecdotes to support this, but unless I'm a really weird outlier, I'd say it's indicative: - Almost every discussion on Apple and scrollbars I see on-line has someone telling a story of how they didn't realize some app was scrollable, because its visual grid happened to align perfectly with viewport size of their iPhone/iPad; - I got caught myself by this a few times on PC, where the design of the page looked complete, scollbars were hidden, and I didn't realize I could scroll down; - I've been the person to tell some confused non-technical people that they could scroll down to see more, because the layout of a webpage did not make this obvious, and without a scrollbar visible, they were just puzzled why there's so little information on the screen. Plural of anecdote is not data, so I'm open to the possibility I may have just had peculiar luck, but I think it's fair to assign a low prior to that. > that an actual human being would simply not scroll because the only visual cue/indicator that people use is a scrollbar, rather than the multitude of context specific information available to indicate whether more content is available What these cases had in common was that there was insufficient context-specific information available to make it apparent the content is scrollable (and - anecdotally, again - in my experience, non-tech-savvy people don't have the nervous tick of just randomly scrolling on the wheel, to check if it does something). Sometimes, the only such contextual information was the feeling you got after reading everything on the page, that something is missing. But if your users have to reach that point to figure out they can try scrolling, the UI failed at its job, and wasted them a minute of their lives.

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?