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Regarding minimaps: I thought, these were great, too, but then I discovered that I find them rather irritating and that I actually don't use them. I guess, this
by masswerk 3y ago
Regarding minimaps: I thought, these were great, too, but then I discovered that I find them rather irritating and that I actually don't use them. I guess, this is, because you have to maintain a mental mapping of that document and how it is organized, already, for the minimap to make sense. But, then, referring to that visual mapping of what you're already mapping in a much more abstract sense, seems – at least for me – to be rather adding friction than being helpful.
The scrollbar, being both highly abstract and visceral/tangible at the same time, is hard to beat.
- syldarion 3y agoAgreed. Once a file/page reaches a certain size, I find minimaps to be a mostly unintelligible blob. Maybe it'd be solved by just making it bigger, but then we push into the problems of screen real estate and what not.
- masswerk 3y agoI think, it's also, instead of just approximating the position in the document, we now feel compelled to translate our mental image to a visual one and to match this with the rendering in the minimap. Which introduces an additional step of dis-abstraction, and what is essentially abstract (text) now has to be treated like a material object, as well. Moreover, if the overall structure isn't as varied as it may be the case with code, it doesn't provide much significance, anyways. (It may depend on where you're located on the aphantasia to photographic memory continuum, though. I'm definitely closer to the former than to the latter extreme.)
- JohnFen 3y agoI agree. I can put up with the minimaps, but I dislike them quite a bit. The traditional scrollbar appears to be pretty close to ideal.