4 ms·

Obvious solution is obvious: restore the fucking scrollbar. I suspect a strong driver of scrollbar deprecation is the overwhelming dominance of small-screen t

Obvious solution is obvious: restore the fucking scrollbar. I suspect a strong driver of scrollbar deprecation is the overwhelming dominance of small-screen touch-based mobile devices. An active scrollbar, that is, one which not only shows page scroll depth, but controls it via touch, is one more UI element to generate annoying behaviours given the already perilous state of touch-based UIs. (The inability to correctly distinguish tap vs. drag or scroll actions is one that's driven me to distraction for well over a decade.) Unfortunately, what's at least arguable on mobile becomes the trendy fashion on desktop, which is just fucking stupid.

scott_w 2y ago
To be fair, the designer of the website can’t restore scrollbars…
- p_l 2y ago
  ... not exactly. It's possible to essentially reimplement the logic of how scrollbars look, where they are, and when they appear, in just CSS on modern browsers. Ended up having to do part of that once because it was easier at the time than to figure out just why a mismatched browser scrollbar would show up due to complex layouting issue (in embedded world, so we didn't actually have to worry about end user preference there, otherwise I wouldn't dare use such a hack)
  - scott_w 2y ago
    Yes, that’s true but I suspect that what you’re doing is also what people are complaining about ;-)
    - p_l 2y ago
      There's a reason why I included "I wouldn't dare" if it was a normal website :D Especially since in our case I essentially deleted the scrollbar.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      As much as I hate what browser devs have done to scrollbars, I tend to agree with you. The one thing worse that fucked defaults is everyone throwing their own fucked personal preferences at you. Which is why sane defaults matter so damned much. There are browser configuration tweaks which can be done in at least some cases. On Firefox Mobile / Fennec, for example, there's a configuration hack which can be done. I'm having trouble tracking that down but I think this might be it: In about:config: ### scrollbar width widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 30 ### scrollbar shape widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4 From: <https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ujo1xy/how_to_increase_firefox_100_scrollbar_width/i7k0xde/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ujo1xy/how_to_incr...>
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  I'm speaking to Web browser developers. I'm #notafan of customising site scrollbars. But I've written my own CSS to do that (used only on my own, non-public, Web pages), and man is it a breath of fucking fresh air. There are other apps which are similarly fucked in this regard. Mozilla's Pocket comes to mind.
bayindirh 2y ago
I personally like disappearing (or shrinking) scrollbars, given they appear when I scroll with a wheel, or approach towards them. It allows me to understand where I am, allows me to grab and scroll quickly when I approach them, and they allow me to see more content. Yes, I use a big screen, but borderless and clean windows allows me to fit more content into the screen and is less distracting in general.
- funcDropShadow 2y ago
  But this works only if you have a scroll wheel. And then it works only vertically. Horizontally you still have to click on the invisible scrollbar. To see where you are in relation to the whole document.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    In Firefox, when I start to move my mouse right, vertical scroll bar appears. Same is true for horizontal one when I move my mouse down. It happens even before I get closer to any of the scroll bars. So, a wheel/trackpad is not required per se. Moreover, almost all mice I used except the most basic ones have horizontal scrolling capability.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Turn mouse sideways. Problem solved!!!
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  Respectfully disagree. I absolutely hate disappearing scrollbars.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    I respect your view. This why we (should) have options. For example, Safari doesn't auto-show scrollbars like Firefox does, and it hinders its usability a lot, if you ask me.
elric 2y ago
I have some 4k pixels of width on my desktop, and some 400 on mobile. It makes sense to not have a wide scrollbar on mobile. But it makes zero sense on desktop. Scrollbars do two things. They let you scroll (duh), but they are also progress indicators. There are other ways of scrolling (e.g. swiping on mobile) which work by default. But there is no other default way of showing progress. I don't particularly like the progress bar example in the original post, something as unobtrusive as a percentage in the bottom right corner would work just as well. But I do want some indication of progress ...
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Agreeing strongly, but I'd just like to point out that a probably more significant problem on mobile is that a scrollbar which you're likely to unintentionally hit with your fingers as you're clumsily and very imprecisely interacting with your device, or as Steve Jobs so famously declared, are "holding it wrong", absolutely is a valid reason to deprecate classic indicator-and-control scrollbars on mobile devices. That is, a classic desktop scrollbar, dating back to Xaw widgets, the original Apple desktop, and even earlier[1] not only shows where you are within a text or display, but allows you to control where you are typically by clicking on elements of that scrollbar: the cursor, the bar itself, and the endpoint arrows. Several of these had interesting / quirky / annoying variants on interaction (those familiar with early X11 Xaw widgets can likely think of several). There's an interesting static image comparison at Reddit: <https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fevolution-of-a-scroll-bar-v0-xzndrrog3ix51.jpg%3Fs%3D01a80f2f024b3a2b53b0aa4aee3275081bf28fcd https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fe...> And a much more informative interactive demonstration by Sébastien Matos from 2019: <https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/ https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/> Discussed on HN a year ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307341> And subject of quite a good review by The Verge: <https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-visual-history-30-years https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-visua...> Another point on swiping: my mobile device for the past three years has been an e-ink tablet. And I've learnt that swiping absolutely sucks. E-ink displays are much faster than people seem to believe, but there's still lag that an emissive display lacks, and it's far better to page through a long text or display than to scroll through it. I've all but entirely adopted an e-ink optimised browser that mostly does this, EinkBro (based on FOSS Browser), and I am constantly trying to page through other apps by tapping where EinkBro's forward/back touch zones are. People who've used other ebook readers will be familiar with the general concept as most have similar features. Having to imprecisely scroll through a document or app is exceedingly painful. Scrollbars partially solve this problem as for most, tapping above or below the cursor will advance the display by about a page of text (some feature a few percent overlap). On desktop systems, there's an even better option: the space bar. For a whole slew of apps and tools, dating back to Unix's pg, more, less, most, etc., you can page through a long text one screen at a time by tapping the space bar, which is the largest damned key (and hence the easiest-to-hit target) on the keyboard (Fitts's Law[2]). By contrast, scrolling on mobile: - Is highly subject to the tap-vs-drag confusion: the GUI cannot consistently distinguish a tap action (interacting with the application) with a drag (changing the viewpoint). - Is imprecise both by contact point (that is where you're interacting with the display) and displacement amount (how far you're moving through a text or app). You might scroll by more or less than a page, and it takes considerable time for the eye to recapture the reading point. - Obscures what it is you're interacting with. Your finger is covering the display you're trying to manipulate. A desktop mouse cursor by contrast covers little or none of the text or app. - Is subject to further confusion based on dynamic characteristics of the document or app you're dealing with (e.g., a Web page with progressively-loaded or rendered elements, or on Mozilla Pocket, inconsistent placement and textblock wrapping around image elements). I come to desperately hate scroll-based interfaces these days. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I wanted to claim provenance to the Mother of All Demos in ninteen-and-motherfucking-sixty-eight, but can't definitively show that Englebart included scrollbars. Wikipedia does give a 1974 implementation in Bravo: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollbar#History_and_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollbar#History_and_progress...>, citing <http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_Sep79.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users...> (PDF). 2. Which dates to 1954!!! <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law> See also <https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0045689 https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0045689> (Fitts, 1964) and an extensive bibliography: <https://www.yorku.ca/mack/RN-Fitts_bib.htm https://www.yorku.ca/mack/RN-Fitts_bib.htm>.

scott_w 2y ago

To be fair, the designer of the website can’t restore scrollbars…

p_l 2y ago
... not exactly. It's possible to essentially reimplement the logic of how scrollbars look, where they are, and when they appear, in just CSS on modern browsers. Ended up having to do part of that once because it was easier at the time than to figure out just why a mismatched browser scrollbar would show up due to complex layouting issue (in embedded world, so we didn't actually have to worry about end user preference there, otherwise I wouldn't dare use such a hack)
- scott_w 2y ago
  Yes, that’s true but I suspect that what you’re doing is also what people are complaining about ;-)
  - p_l 2y ago
    There's a reason why I included "I wouldn't dare" if it was a normal website :D Especially since in our case I essentially deleted the scrollbar.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    As much as I hate what browser devs have done to scrollbars, I tend to agree with you. The one thing worse that fucked defaults is everyone throwing their own fucked personal preferences at you. Which is why sane defaults matter so damned much. There are browser configuration tweaks which can be done in at least some cases. On Firefox Mobile / Fennec, for example, there's a configuration hack which can be done. I'm having trouble tracking that down but I think this might be it: In about:config: ### scrollbar width widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 30 ### scrollbar shape widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style 4 From: <https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ujo1xy/how_to_increase_firefox_100_scrollbar_width/i7k0xde/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ujo1xy/how_to_incr...>
dredmorbius 2y ago
I'm speaking to Web browser developers. I'm #notafan of customising site scrollbars. But I've written my own CSS to do that (used only on my own, non-public, Web pages), and man is it a breath of fucking fresh air. There are other apps which are similarly fucked in this regard. Mozilla's Pocket comes to mind.

bayindirh 2y ago

I personally like disappearing (or shrinking) scrollbars, given they appear when I scroll with a wheel, or approach towards them. It allows me to understand where I am, allows me to grab and scroll quickly when I approach them, and they allow me to see more content. Yes, I use a big screen, but borderless and clean windows allows me to fit more content into the screen and is less distracting in general.

funcDropShadow 2y ago
But this works only if you have a scroll wheel. And then it works only vertically. Horizontally you still have to click on the invisible scrollbar. To see where you are in relation to the whole document.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  In Firefox, when I start to move my mouse right, vertical scroll bar appears. Same is true for horizontal one when I move my mouse down. It happens even before I get closer to any of the scroll bars. So, a wheel/trackpad is not required per se. Moreover, almost all mice I used except the most basic ones have horizontal scrolling capability.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Turn mouse sideways. Problem solved!!!
brokenmachine 2y ago
Respectfully disagree. I absolutely hate disappearing scrollbars.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  I respect your view. This why we (should) have options. For example, Safari doesn't auto-show scrollbars like Firefox does, and it hinders its usability a lot, if you ask me.

elric 2y ago

I have some 4k pixels of width on my desktop, and some 400 on mobile. It makes sense to not have a wide scrollbar on mobile. But it makes zero sense on desktop. Scrollbars do two things. They let you scroll (duh), but they are also progress indicators. There are other ways of scrolling (e.g. swiping on mobile) which work by default. But there is no other default way of showing progress. I don't particularly like the progress bar example in the original post, something as unobtrusive as a percentage in the bottom right corner would work just as well. But I do want some indication of progress ...

dredmorbius 2y ago
Agreeing strongly, but I'd just like to point out that a probably more significant problem on mobile is that a scrollbar which you're likely to unintentionally hit with your fingers as you're clumsily and very imprecisely interacting with your device, or as Steve Jobs so famously declared, are "holding it wrong", absolutely is a valid reason to deprecate classic indicator-and-control scrollbars on mobile devices. That is, a classic desktop scrollbar, dating back to Xaw widgets, the original Apple desktop, and even earlier[1] not only shows where you are within a text or display, but allows you to control where you are typically by clicking on elements of that scrollbar: the cursor, the bar itself, and the endpoint arrows. Several of these had interesting / quirky / annoying variants on interaction (those familiar with early X11 Xaw widgets can likely think of several). There's an interesting static image comparison at Reddit: <https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fevolution-of-a-scroll-bar-v0-xzndrrog3ix51.jpg%3Fs%3D01a80f2f024b3a2b53b0aa4aee3275081bf28fcd https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fe...> And a much more informative interactive demonstration by Sébastien Matos from 2019: <https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/ https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/> Discussed on HN a year ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307341> And subject of quite a good review by The Verge: <https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-visual-history-30-years https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-visua...> Another point on swiping: my mobile device for the past three years has been an e-ink tablet. And I've learnt that swiping absolutely sucks. E-ink displays are much faster than people seem to believe, but there's still lag that an emissive display lacks, and it's far better to page through a long text or display than to scroll through it. I've all but entirely adopted an e-ink optimised browser that mostly does this, EinkBro (based on FOSS Browser), and I am constantly trying to page through other apps by tapping where EinkBro's forward/back touch zones are. People who've used other ebook readers will be familiar with the general concept as most have similar features. Having to imprecisely scroll through a document or app is exceedingly painful. Scrollbars partially solve this problem as for most, tapping above or below the cursor will advance the display by about a page of text (some feature a few percent overlap). On desktop systems, there's an even better option: the space bar. For a whole slew of apps and tools, dating back to Unix's pg, more, less, most, etc., you can page through a long text one screen at a time by tapping the space bar, which is the largest damned key (and hence the easiest-to-hit target) on the keyboard (Fitts's Law[2]). By contrast, scrolling on mobile: - Is highly subject to the tap-vs-drag confusion: the GUI cannot consistently distinguish a tap action (interacting with the application) with a drag (changing the viewpoint). - Is imprecise both by contact point (that is where you're interacting with the display) and displacement amount (how far you're moving through a text or app). You might scroll by more or less than a page, and it takes considerable time for the eye to recapture the reading point. - Obscures what it is you're interacting with. Your finger is covering the display you're trying to manipulate. A desktop mouse cursor by contrast covers little or none of the text or app. - Is subject to further confusion based on dynamic characteristics of the document or app you're dealing with (e.g., a Web page with progressively-loaded or rendered elements, or on Mozilla Pocket, inconsistent placement and textblock wrapping around image elements). I come to desperately hate scroll-based interfaces these days. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I wanted to claim provenance to the Mother of All Demos in ninteen-and-motherfucking-sixty-eight, but can't definitively show that Englebart included scrollbars. Wikipedia does give a 1974 implementation in Bravo: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollbar#History_and_progression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollbar#History_and_progress...>, citing <http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_Sep79.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users...> (PDF). 2. Which dates to 1954!!! <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law> See also <https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0045689 https://doi.org/10.1037%2Fh0045689> (Fitts, 1964) and an extensive bibliography: <https://www.yorku.ca/mack/RN-Fitts_bib.htm https://www.yorku.ca/mack/RN-Fitts_bib.htm>.