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Only tangentially related, and a seemingly lost old-man battle: stop hiding my scrollbar. Interesting article. Some points I didn't quite agree entirely with.
by BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Only tangentially related, and a seemingly lost old-man battle: stop hiding my scrollbar.
Interesting article. Some points I didn't quite agree entirely with. There's a cost and practically limitation to some things (like a physical knob in a car for zooming in and out on a map - although that was probably just an example of intuitive use).
I just recently switched a toggle on a newly installed app that did the opposite of what it was labelled - I thought the label represented the current state, but it represented the state it would switch to if toggled. It became obvious once changed, but that seems the least helpful execution.
- thangalin 1y ago> stop hiding my scrollbar https://superuser.com/a/1720363 https://superuser.com/a/1720363 Use Firefox?
- panzi 1y agoStop making my scrollbar so impossible thin, Firefox!
- cube00 1y agoGnome enjoys the impossibly thin scrollbars too even when you do manage to find them.
- msgodel 1y agoGTK+ used to be a decent widget toolkit.
- Kwpolska 1y agoYou might be able to set a different scrollbar style in about:config.
- gred 1y agohttps://askubuntu.com/questions/1407179/widening-firefox-scrollbar https://askubuntu.com/questions/1407179/widening-firefox-scr...
- panzi 1y agoThanks a lot! This finally did what I want: widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style = 4 widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override = 20 Though I'm not sure if I maybe want: widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style = 3 widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override = 30 Plus of course that, which I had found earlier and did nothing on it's own: widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled = false layout.css.scrollbar-width-thin.disabled = true
- paleotrope 1y agoI can't recall the app but it was a similar toggle with a label, when you flipped the toggle the label lit up green indicating it was turned on. But the default state was off but how would you know?
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe green / red is at least a half decent indicator (questionable for the colour blind folks though), but the current trend of very slightly different shades of grey is the pinnacle of utterly fucking stupid design; perfect for a non-interactive set piece in a gallery, just dumb for use for by human beings.
- cgriswald 1y agoI have to believe in the case of cookie banners it is intentional.
- IggleSniggle 1y agoRight! If you want it to denote an action, you need to include the verb: "TURN ON" would be entirely clear. It's even clear if you sometimes DO want to show state / not a button "IS ON" is also perfectly clear. There's only a few that might he confused when the verb is shown, like "INCREASE," although I would have to work a little to imagine the UI where it's not clear whether the button is showing the verb or noun.
- TylerE 1y agoOne of my big beefs with modern UI is two-state controls where it's impossible to determine what the current state actually is. Like a button that says "Music Off" where it's unclear if that means the music is CURRENTLY off, or if clicking the button turns it off.
- khaki54 1y agoYep the best example. Especially if the result is not immediately obvious. Am I commanding "system on" or are you telling me "system on"
- jagged-chisel 1y agoSimilarly, I can’t tell which state the control is in until I touch it.
- foo42 1y agoyou can get the same issue with icons too. The one that gives me anxiety is the microphone with a line through on a button. I _am_ muted or I should click to _mute_. If my kids are arguing in the background and it's an important call it can feel like a high stakes thing to get wrong and often times it only becomes clear what state I'm in by toggling a few times. Does the icon change to a mic without a line when I click or does the previously shown mic with a line now get coloured in, what does _that_ mean?
- SpaceNoodled 1y agoAnd even WORSE are the services that use different variations on those depending on the platform you're using! Yes, I am looking directly at you, Amazon Chime.
- userbinator 1y agoI hate toggle switches IRL too. They are just as ambiguous there. Checkboxes and pushed-in buttons are far clearer, but have unfortunately been sacrificed at the altar of "modernity".
- wpm 1y agoToggle switches in real life can and often are labeled. A toggle pointing to OFF means it’s off. Moving it to on turns it on.
- Nevermark 1y agoAnd a toggle colored/glowing red & green, for off & on, is clear. Boggles my mind how badly many interfaces manage to be.
- rasur 1y agoUnless you're red/green colour-blind, of course ;)
- Nevermark 1y agoPerhaps chartreuse and teal? More seriously, my understanding is that the octopus retina does not have color receptors, just aggregate light, I.e. brightness. But the octopus practically has a sub-brain behind each respective eye, and the eye brains can extract color from the slight lensing differences across frequencies. They are amazing magical creatures. Taking that approach, and some sort of ocular lathe, and we can fix this.
- msephton 1y agoIn macOS you can have the scroll bar always on, globally (using System Settings) or per-app (using Terminal command)
- rkagerer 1y agoAnd please support PgUp and PgDn while you're at it.
- hn111 1y agoon MacOS you can use Fn+Up and Fn+Down
- RossBencina 1y agoYes, and please retain the behavior of clicking in the non-thumb areas to page up and down (with a modifier key to jump instead of paging).
- 6510 1y agoIn the 90's I had this vision that the menu and the scrollbar should be physically separated from the screen. If you have (next to your monitor on the left side) a narrow physical display with menu entries in it. You get 4 things for "free", the user will expect there to be menu entries, the developer will understand the expectations to have menu entries, there is limited room to go nuts with the layout or shape of the menu and last but most funny, you won't feel part of the screen has been taken away from you. The physical scrollbar should be a transparent tube with a ball (or ideally a bubble) floating in it. Usage could be moving the pointer out of the screen. The scrollbar led goes on and you can hold the button to move the page. When using the menu the pointer [also] vanishes and the menu entry at that height is highlighted. (much better usability) Moving the mouse up or down highlights the above or below entries, if there are a lot of entries it may also scroll. It may be a touch screen but the most usuable would be a vertical row of 5 extra wide (3 fingers) keyboard buttons on the left with the top 4 corresponding to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th menu entry and the 5th one for page down. (scrolling down 4 entries) Ideally these get some kind of texturing so that one can feel which button one is touching. This way knowledge in the world can smoothly migrate to knowledge in the head until eventually you can smash out combinations of M keys in fractions of a second without looking at the screen or the keyboard. The menu displayed is always in focus, you don't have to examine the view port to use it. Having a row of horizontal F keys is a design fiasco. Instinctively bashing the full row of those might come natural after learning to type, then learning to type numbers, then symbols and only if you frequently use applications that have useful F key functionality. I only really know F5 and F11 but I cant smash them blindly as I pretty much never use them. I just tried F1 in firefox and no help documentation showed up... I think that was what it was suppose to do? Not even sure anymore. Having the antenna menu (file, edit, etc) at the top of the viewport is also ugly. For example, smashing the second then the top M key could easily become second nature. CTRL+Z is fine of course but it aint knowledge in the world. Does anyone actually use ALT+E+U for undo? Try it on the CTRL+F input area. It's just funny. Type something in the address bar then compare ALT+E+U with using the Edit menu. A separate display would take many of these "design" privileges away from the clowns. (note: I think it is ALT+E+U as the Dutch layout is forced on me by windos. Edit is called Bewerken and the shortcut is ALT+W!?! ALT+E does nothing.)
- 1y ago
- analog31 1y agoYeah, a hidden scroll bar makes a UI unusable if you prefer a touch screen, as I do.
- panzi 1y agoThere was such a confusing toggle at the ticket machines for the train here in Austria many years ago. It was for immediately validating your ticket, which is a potentially costly mistake. About the scroll bars: Also stop making them so thin that I have to have FPS skills to hit them! Looking at you, Firefox! (And possibly what standard CSS allows?) Yeah, I can scroll, but horizontally the scrollbar would be more convenient than pressing shift with my other hand.
- jama211 1y agoI’ve never known until this moment that shift makes you scroll horizontally, because I’ve always either used a mouse with horizontal scrolling built into the scroll wheel, or a touchpad.
- jeroenhd 1y agoIt's been a standard Windows feature for quite some time! I don't think people need to scroll horizontally as much now that most screens are no longer rectangular, but this feature goes back to the dialup era and very few people seem to know about it.
- IIsi50MHz 1y agoMost screens are now no longer rectangular? I need to check your Multiverse Access Card and get you back to your home portal.
- 1718627440 1y agoAnd Ctrl is used for the third dimension.
- anjel 1y agoFirefox nonobviousity: Type in about:config in your address bar Search for widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override Edit it to whatever number you want You can also edit widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style to change the shape of it, set it to 4 for a nice chonk rectangle Finally, turn on “Always show scrollbars” in the normal settings window about:settings if you want them always on.
- 725686 1y agoI absolutely despise switches. I'm also constantly asking myself if the label represents the current state or the state it would switch to.
- qingcharles 1y agoAnd then the second factor: has this change been applied immediately or do I need to scroll around to find a SAVE CHANGES button?
- Animats 1y ago> I thought the label represented the current state, but it represented the state it would switch to if toggled. It became obvious once changed, but that seems the least helpful execution. Such ambiguous switches are often associated with "opt out" misfeatures.
- chrisandchris 1y agoReading through the responses of your comment, I came to the conclusion that the topic is on point. There are many complains about people missing things (please add ...), and people responding with a solution because it's already there - just hidden.
- devnullbrain 1y agoHidden options tend to degrade. Defaults are important.
- skyboo 1y agoI recently used the washroom at a Starbucks. The one where you have to enter a code to get in. Once I was inside, there were no knobs or any mechanical way to lock the door - just one circular button with a lock icon on it. I pressed it, and the button lit up as green. Pressed it again, it lit up as red. No indication on what light colour meant what. Does red mean it's unlocked? Or does it mean it is locked, since red usually indicates no entry. It made for the quickest pee break ever.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThat's a weird example where a higher level of technology is applied in a scenario where much lower technology, a physical lock, is both much cheaper and more practical. Who makes these decisions?