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I don't understand what all this pseudo-innovation in scroll bar technology is accomplishing. I first saw it in google wave, which drastically changed the way t

I don't understand what all this pseudo-innovation in scroll bar technology is accomplishing. I first saw it in google wave, which drastically changed the way that scroll bars behaved, and the way I had to interact with them. More recently, I've upgraded Ubuntu and now Unity has funky, unintuitive scroll bars. What is the holy grail of scroll bar usability, and is this getting us any closer? I'm not really feeling the advantages. Edit: as per slig's comment, a lot of tools in google's latest design refresh are using terrible scroll bars, too.

colanderman 15y ago
Holy grail == hold down a button and drag. Many web browsers already have this functionality (sort of) with middle-click. Forcing the user to navigate to some tiny on-screen affordance which takes up screen real estate is a terrible design (except in the special case where the scroll bar is at the extreme edge of the screen). Mobile web browsers seem to get this right. Touch the element you want to scroll & drag it; an overlay pops up to show your relative location. Intuitive, easy, and doesn't take up screen real estate. Scroll wheels (especially Kensington's beautiful "Orbit" scroll rings on their trackballs) are pretty close to the mark too.