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If we are talking UI we need to talk about Apple. The first thin I do on MacOS is turn on the scroll bars. Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling

If we are talking UI we need to talk about Apple. The first thin I do on MacOS is turn on the scroll bars. Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling" by default, which is probably the most ridiculous setting.

leokennis 3y ago
I saw those fat candy looking aqua scrollbars in the linked article and I immediately thought how great OS X used to look and work. Truly sad the mess macOS is now.
tannhaeuser 3y ago
Not getting it. I mean, if Mac OS lets you configure scroll bars (and I haven't noticed a problem with the defaults so far either) that's much much more than can be said about gnome isn't it? Where gnome theming has gone from black magic in v3 to ... anathema in v4.
chefandy 3y ago
It seems like most people who scroll use touch, wheel, or other non-scroll-bar interfaces, and the scroll bars are just a visual indicator of document size and position while navigating it. I know I do— and have for 20 years unless I was using a shitty laptop without a scrolling input method. Maybe unless I'm scrolling through literally millions of lines of text, which is infrequent enough that I'd prefer to have them hidden and revealable by scrolling a bit. Not having them take up screen real estate and working with most people's usage styles while being configurable for others is the right decision. The problem is systems and applications that don't let you configure them. People talk about accessibility and their preferences like they are absolute truths— it's a lot more complex. Not having scroll bars sucks for people that never got comfortable with other scrolling input methods and people who use sight interfaces, for example. They couldn't possibly be less relevant to people who use screen readers, and as an input method rather than an Univision visual indicator, only slightly more relevant to people on phones and tablets. Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. Adding visible UI elements adds cognitive load, and for people who never worked with scroll bars out of necessity, they're just another bulky animated distraction on the screen. Most younger users would probably think them about as useful as an always-visible on-screen keyboard. I guarantee you— the designers at Apple who chose to hide those scroll bars probably thought more about scrolling more than every one of these commenters combined, and that was before they did formal usability studies.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Does anyone apply formal usability studies anymore? (not just do them - do they apply the results). I was trained in formal UX long ago, and many UIs today outright violate common rules we learned back then. High contrast was considered important for low vision users even if it looked ugly then. Now most UIs are lower contrast and while they look nicer, they are less usable. Of course I learned long ago and so I'm willing to accept that what was best practices back then might be wrong given new research that I'm not aware of. However this seems unlikely.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    Formal usability testing is still practiced in enterprise, military, and professional products. From what I've seen from colleagues in the consumer space they've predominantly switched to A/B testing and statistical clickstream/log analyses, though large companies sometimes still do run lab studies for important decisions and to rationalize the giant one-way mirror they installed.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      It depends on how big/important/popular of a product you're talking about, but most software that your average joe uses (operating systems, native communication apps, national websites) likely either conduct significant usability testing or largely inform their designs using great usability testing from people like the mozilla foundation and the nielsen norman group. And no-- neither of those organizations have to be perfect for that to be a perfectly valid approach, and if you follow that guidance, you'll never end up with a 'very low contrast' interface.
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    I go to the store to buy a hammer. I’m a hammer user and I use the hammer. Or I go to the store and I buy heroin. I’m a heroin user and I use the heroin. These UIs we speak of, are they hammers, or are they heroin? Because I’m currently looking at a high contrast screen using a mixture of Unix tools created from the late 60s to yesterday. I’m looking at an Excel spreadsheet made by a team of lawyers that is in a UI. The lawyers themselves highlighted and handled the contrast of the document. Beyond the table itself, Excel’s menu bar is easy to read for the basic operating needs of a spreadsheet. I mean come on, the pivot table UI is clearly masterful. (If Excel was a native plaintext tabular format and you could pipe stdin/out to the GUI app? Gimme!) However, a lot of software is basically useless these days. It’s not designed from the beginning to be productive in any shape or form. Some stoned dance by a junkie under a highway overpass is definitely some kind of expressive art form. How much more productive is the expressive art forms promoted by TikTok, Twitter or Twitch? There’s clearly a scale at play. I’m as big fan of Twitch as much as I’m a big fan of the Buffalo Bills. I’ve always appreciated the sociological aspects of sports. To add some context to my definition of productivity, I would say that group sporting events are overall productive from a sociological perspective, be it IPL cricket or Fortnite tournaments. TikTok is clearly and quite obviously towards the junkie dance scale of things. From an experiential position there was not much of a difference between my observations of a woman filming herself doing a weird little dance on the sidewalk while completely oblivious to the rest of the world and the junky on the next block doing a weird little dance on the sidewalk while completely oblivious to the rest of the world. This basic object-level assessment of the actions that we and others experience with our physical bodies is core to the very notion of “meaning”. The “meaning” is just the stoned dance. I know of no junkies famous for only being junkies but there are definitely TikTokers famous for only being TikTokers so don’t confuse this for some strict equivalence. I’m just trying to establish a kind of framework for discussing the relationship between productive UI and productive software tools.
LeanderK 3y ago
> Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling" by default, which is probably the most ridiculous setting. I have used MacOS every day for 10 years and i've never, except in exceptional circumstances, used the scrollbar to scroll. I don't see anybody in my circle using it. They all have the "Only Show When Scrolling" setting on. I don't think this is ridiculous and I would enable the setting if turned off by default. I also spend 99% percent of my time in full-screen mode in safari, vscode or terminal. So the top bar is also hidden by default. I think this is much more focused.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  The scroll bar, for me at. least, is also used to gauge how far along in a document I am. So its use is more than just for moving. If I have to find out here I am in a document by scrolling that just means extra effort on my part.
  - LeanderK 3y ago
    it might be how you're using the computer. It shows by touching (not scrolling) the trackpad (and if I correctly remember also the magic mouse?).
agloe_dreams 3y ago
I can, 100% say that I haven't used a scroll bar on the web in years. I do find the hidden scroll more aesthetically pleasing.
- Sakos 3y ago
  Yes, we should absolutely make everything less accessible in the name of aesthetics. That's made computer interfaces so much better in the past 20 years.
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    That's just it. It is a choice, you can turn it on or off.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Most people could say the same thing about wheelchair ramps, another form of accessibility

leokennis 3y ago

I saw those fat candy looking aqua scrollbars in the linked article and I immediately thought how great OS X used to look and work. Truly sad the mess macOS is now.

tannhaeuser 3y ago

Not getting it. I mean, if Mac OS lets you configure scroll bars (and I haven't noticed a problem with the defaults so far either) that's much much more than can be said about gnome isn't it? Where gnome theming has gone from black magic in v3 to ... anathema in v4.

chefandy 3y ago

It seems like most people who scroll use touch, wheel, or other non-scroll-bar interfaces, and the scroll bars are just a visual indicator of document size and position while navigating it. I know I do— and have for 20 years unless I was using a shitty laptop without a scrolling input method. Maybe unless I'm scrolling through literally millions of lines of text, which is infrequent enough that I'd prefer to have them hidden and revealable by scrolling a bit. Not having them take up screen real estate and working with most people's usage styles while being configurable for others is the right decision. The problem is systems and applications that don't let you configure them. People talk about accessibility and their preferences like they are absolute truths— it's a lot more complex. Not having scroll bars sucks for people that never got comfortable with other scrolling input methods and people who use sight interfaces, for example. They couldn't possibly be less relevant to people who use screen readers, and as an input method rather than an Univision visual indicator, only slightly more relevant to people on phones and tablets. Phone and tablet usage has outpaced regular computer usage for quite some time, and that informs users interaction style. Adding visible UI elements adds cognitive load, and for people who never worked with scroll bars out of necessity, they're just another bulky animated distraction on the screen. Most younger users would probably think them about as useful as an always-visible on-screen keyboard. I guarantee you— the designers at Apple who chose to hide those scroll bars probably thought more about scrolling more than every one of these commenters combined, and that was before they did formal usability studies.

bluGill 3y ago
Does anyone apply formal usability studies anymore? (not just do them - do they apply the results). I was trained in formal UX long ago, and many UIs today outright violate common rules we learned back then. High contrast was considered important for low vision users even if it looked ugly then. Now most UIs are lower contrast and while they look nicer, they are less usable. Of course I learned long ago and so I'm willing to accept that what was best practices back then might be wrong given new research that I'm not aware of. However this seems unlikely.
- asoneth 3y ago
  Formal usability testing is still practiced in enterprise, military, and professional products. From what I've seen from colleagues in the consumer space they've predominantly switched to A/B testing and statistical clickstream/log analyses, though large companies sometimes still do run lab studies for important decisions and to rationalize the giant one-way mirror they installed.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    It depends on how big/important/popular of a product you're talking about, but most software that your average joe uses (operating systems, native communication apps, national websites) likely either conduct significant usability testing or largely inform their designs using great usability testing from people like the mozilla foundation and the nielsen norman group. And no-- neither of those organizations have to be perfect for that to be a perfectly valid approach, and if you follow that guidance, you'll never end up with a 'very low contrast' interface.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  I go to the store to buy a hammer. I’m a hammer user and I use the hammer. Or I go to the store and I buy heroin. I’m a heroin user and I use the heroin. These UIs we speak of, are they hammers, or are they heroin? Because I’m currently looking at a high contrast screen using a mixture of Unix tools created from the late 60s to yesterday. I’m looking at an Excel spreadsheet made by a team of lawyers that is in a UI. The lawyers themselves highlighted and handled the contrast of the document. Beyond the table itself, Excel’s menu bar is easy to read for the basic operating needs of a spreadsheet. I mean come on, the pivot table UI is clearly masterful. (If Excel was a native plaintext tabular format and you could pipe stdin/out to the GUI app? Gimme!) However, a lot of software is basically useless these days. It’s not designed from the beginning to be productive in any shape or form. Some stoned dance by a junkie under a highway overpass is definitely some kind of expressive art form. How much more productive is the expressive art forms promoted by TikTok, Twitter or Twitch? There’s clearly a scale at play. I’m as big fan of Twitch as much as I’m a big fan of the Buffalo Bills. I’ve always appreciated the sociological aspects of sports. To add some context to my definition of productivity, I would say that group sporting events are overall productive from a sociological perspective, be it IPL cricket or Fortnite tournaments. TikTok is clearly and quite obviously towards the junkie dance scale of things. From an experiential position there was not much of a difference between my observations of a woman filming herself doing a weird little dance on the sidewalk while completely oblivious to the rest of the world and the junky on the next block doing a weird little dance on the sidewalk while completely oblivious to the rest of the world. This basic object-level assessment of the actions that we and others experience with our physical bodies is core to the very notion of “meaning”. The “meaning” is just the stoned dance. I know of no junkies famous for only being junkies but there are definitely TikTokers famous for only being TikTokers so don’t confuse this for some strict equivalence. I’m just trying to establish a kind of framework for discussing the relationship between productive UI and productive software tools.

LeanderK 3y ago

> Yes, MacOS Has them set as "Only Show When Scrolling" by default, which is probably the most ridiculous setting. I have used MacOS every day for 10 years and i've never, except in exceptional circumstances, used the scrollbar to scroll. I don't see anybody in my circle using it. They all have the "Only Show When Scrolling" setting on. I don't think this is ridiculous and I would enable the setting if turned off by default. I also spend 99% percent of my time in full-screen mode in safari, vscode or terminal. So the top bar is also hidden by default. I think this is much more focused.

Podgajski 3y ago
The scroll bar, for me at. least, is also used to gauge how far along in a document I am. So its use is more than just for moving. If I have to find out here I am in a document by scrolling that just means extra effort on my part.
- LeanderK 3y ago
  it might be how you're using the computer. It shows by touching (not scrolling) the trackpad (and if I correctly remember also the magic mouse?).

agloe_dreams 3y ago

I can, 100% say that I haven't used a scroll bar on the web in years. I do find the hidden scroll more aesthetically pleasing.

Sakos 3y ago
Yes, we should absolutely make everything less accessible in the name of aesthetics. That's made computer interfaces so much better in the past 20 years.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  That's just it. It is a choice, you can turn it on or off.
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
Most people could say the same thing about wheelchair ramps, another form of accessibility