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Modern disappearing scrollbars in Linux are an awful design: - as scrollbar in browser disappears, I cannot see the position on the page and whether it is scro

Modern disappearing scrollbars in Linux are an awful design: - as scrollbar in browser disappears, I cannot see the position on the page and whether it is scrollable at all - as scrollbar handle is very narrow, it is difficult to drag it You might ask, why drag the scrollbar handle? Well, when you have tens thousands of lines in the terminal, it will take a long time to scroll it using touchpad or mouse wheel.

eviks 3y ago
It's an awful design because it ignores one is the most important factors of scrolling - document length. But then having wide scroll bars in short documents where you'd never use them is also bad design
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  It is good design to have "wide-enough-for-long-doc" scrollbars in short documents for principle of least surprise.
  - eviks 3y ago
    That's repeating the same mistake - trying to force one generic principle onto every situation. Opt-in can solve that - only users that don't get surprised by a lack of useless elements can remove them
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      Not a mistake. At worse a tradeoff. Hiding a scroll bar when you go below some arbitrary document height that would classically warrant a scroll bar is just confusing. People who use a mouse to scroll will not know what to do and assume there is a bug. And sometimes you want scrollbar level control even on a short document. It is not forcing them to use the scrollbar: keyboard shortcuts and menu items should still work as well.
      - eviks 3y ago
        > Hiding a scroll bar when you go below some arbitrary document height that would classically warrant a scroll bar is just confusing. No it's not because you OPT INTO this feature and could change the document height from arbitrary to a threshold where using your wheel is uncomfortable (and that would depend on your device, e.g., with infinite Logitech scroll wheel that length is much bigger since it's very easy to scroll large distances) > People who use a mouse to scroll will not know what to do and assume there is a bug. No they won't because they'd OPT INTO this feature > And sometimes you want scrollbar level control even on a short document I never do, but then there are also solutions for this that don't involve some narrow understanding of the principle of least surprise > It is not forcing them to use the scrollbar But it is forcing them to clutter UI/waste space by not allowing to hide the scrollbar in most frequent use cases
        quickthrower2 3y ago
        Ok if we are now saying it is an opt-in feature (to hide the scrollbar for short enough docs) then fine I guess. Feels like we have hashed out a JIRA description in the planning session of some imaginary product, now someone code this!
mfru 3y ago
for anyone wanting to change their scrollbars for firefox and gnome: - in firefox there is an option to always show scrollbars (section "browsing") - in gnome you can change the setting org/gnome/desktop/interface/overlay-scrolling to false (with i.e. dconf-editor)

eviks 3y ago

It's an awful design because it ignores one is the most important factors of scrolling - document length. But then having wide scroll bars in short documents where you'd never use them is also bad design

quickthrower2 3y ago
It is good design to have "wide-enough-for-long-doc" scrollbars in short documents for principle of least surprise.
- eviks 3y ago
  That's repeating the same mistake - trying to force one generic principle onto every situation. Opt-in can solve that - only users that don't get surprised by a lack of useless elements can remove them
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Not a mistake. At worse a tradeoff. Hiding a scroll bar when you go below some arbitrary document height that would classically warrant a scroll bar is just confusing. People who use a mouse to scroll will not know what to do and assume there is a bug. And sometimes you want scrollbar level control even on a short document. It is not forcing them to use the scrollbar: keyboard shortcuts and menu items should still work as well.
    - eviks 3y ago
      > Hiding a scroll bar when you go below some arbitrary document height that would classically warrant a scroll bar is just confusing. No it's not because you OPT INTO this feature and could change the document height from arbitrary to a threshold where using your wheel is uncomfortable (and that would depend on your device, e.g., with infinite Logitech scroll wheel that length is much bigger since it's very easy to scroll large distances) > People who use a mouse to scroll will not know what to do and assume there is a bug. No they won't because they'd OPT INTO this feature > And sometimes you want scrollbar level control even on a short document I never do, but then there are also solutions for this that don't involve some narrow understanding of the principle of least surprise > It is not forcing them to use the scrollbar But it is forcing them to clutter UI/waste space by not allowing to hide the scrollbar in most frequent use cases
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        Ok if we are now saying it is an opt-in feature (to hide the scrollbar for short enough docs) then fine I guess. Feels like we have hashed out a JIRA description in the planning session of some imaginary product, now someone code this!

mfru 3y ago

for anyone wanting to change their scrollbars for firefox and gnome: - in firefox there is an option to always show scrollbars (section "browsing") - in gnome you can change the setting org/gnome/desktop/interface/overlay-scrolling to false (with i.e. dconf-editor)