10 ms·

Agreed. Not to put to fine a point on it, but if your user is on iOS or OS X, they are accustomed to losing sight of their progress because, as the article say

• jfb 13y ago
  "Going out of your way as a content author to correct for the user interface quirks of the reader's preferred reading environment seems extraordinary and unnecessary." I would actually say that it's outright user hostile to do this sort of garbage.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  It's my preferred reading environment, but I hate that apple made this decision, because, as my sibling commenter here noted, it's outright user hostile. Apple never really totally understood the "visibility" requirement of usable interfaces. They like to hide things to make them look pretty, and it only leads to better advertising, not better interfaces. Thankfully there's still a setting to always show scrollbars. For now.
  • bhauer 13y ago
    I actually agree with you--I prefer for the scrollbar to remain visible. In my preferred reading environment, a Windows PC running Firefox, it does remain visible. I like clean design, but not at the expense of function. I am firmly of the opinion that too much functionality has been sacrificed from modern user interfaces at the altar of simplicity. I'm nevertheless of the point of view that the content author should not fuss with these specific particulars, leaving them instead to the discretion of the designers of the reading environment itself. The consumer of the content can then weigh the design of those elements when selecting a preferred reading environment.
    • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      In principle I agree with you. In this case apple's decision causes actual problems with content. Putting stuff in a scrollable iframe, or overflow scroll pane now involves carefully instructing people on how to scroll it. Or you force your own custom scrollbars. Or just not have scrollable panes-- you could argue that is a good thing, but sometimes they are unavoidable. Like, for instance, here on HN if someone happens to post an extremely long code segment. if you are using a mac, remember that you need to scroll horizontally to read all of the above message. on an ipad use two fingers to scroll it. Do you get my point? Is the above a problem for HN or for Apple or for the User to puzzle out?
      • bhauer 13y ago
        I do get your point, and it's a good one. My opinion about allowing the user the luxury of having selected their preferred reading environment isn't so inflexible to say that you shouldn't afford users some concessions in a scenario such as this. On my PC, I of course do see a scrollbar. In fact, I probably would not at first even realize that I need to instruct viewers on other platforms to interact with the content in any unusual manner. But once aware of it, given the capability to design my content differently to avoid the situation described, I would go with that. Failing that option, I would probably just put instructions in as you've done here. I would fairly steadfastly refuse to implement my own scrollbar functionality because I'd likely fail to implement that in a manner all users on all devices would understand intuitively. For the majority of scenarios, the browsers' default behavior will match the users' expectations and they will be able to consume the content I've created in the fashion with which they are accustomed. As an aside, this conversation reminds me that legacy versions of IE (and maybe current versions; I've not checked) allowed one to affect the appearance of the browser's scrollbar through CSS.
      • cdmoyer 13y ago
        Heh, funnily enough, it scrolls with one finger on the beta iOS. Although, I think they may have changed that in a previous safari update.
      • millstone 13y ago
  • madeofpalk 13y ago
    I guess it comes down to personal taste. I for one like that they hide away, and I can bring them back just by holding down for two fingers on my trackpad. Thankfully you can make scroll bars persistent in System Preferences.
    • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      The "personal taste" argument comes up a lot in usability conversations. I find it to be incredibly weak. I might personally prefer to walk blindfolded across busy roadways. But that doesn't make it broadly easy or advisable. It's just simply a bad decision. There shouldn't be a preference, it should just be on by default, end of story. It only makes sense on iPads. The fact that it's auto-hide by default means that most mac owners will just simply have their machines set to auto-hide the scrollbar, and very likely have no idea that a setting exists- Then blame it all on the content owners for making a bad/hard to use site. (especially if they decide they want a scrollable pane with OS specific scrollbars on it) To expand a little bit, even something as seemingly arbitrary, like driving on the right or left side of the road, is not a matter of preference. If you pick the wrong one in a certain country, you can equally get yourself killed as with your other more obviously wrong "preferences". There is value in having everything work in a standard way.
      • supercoder 13y ago
        This case is almost certainly preference. I prefer the indicators hidden, you prefer them on.
        • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
          You prefer your car headlights off at night. I prefer them on. Completely preference, right? You missed my point. Just invoking the word "preference" is a weak argument. You need something more like an actual argument. With evidence and logic.
          • sbuk 13y ago
  • millstone 13y ago
    The scrolling interface is always visible. It's just on the input device instead of the screen. Originally, the scroll bar itself was the interface. You scrolled by clicking the little arrows, or by grabbing the scroll thumb and dragging. But when scroll wheels were introduced, the scroll bar became less necessary. And with the advent of trackpad magic/mouse scrolling, which support both horizontal and vertical scrolling, the scroll-bar-as-interface becomes ridiculous. (Note that the default OS X behavior is not "hide scroll bars," but "hide scroll bars if your mouse or trackpad supports scrolling.") That said, while there's no longer much need to interact with scroll bars, there's still a need to indicate that scrolling is possible, and possibly your position in the document. But surely we can convey that in fewer than the ten thousand pixels that a scroll bar consumes?
    • mbell 13y ago
      For the most part I agree, I like what OSX does. However, there are edge cases which are infuriating. Have you tried to scroll through an HTML <select multiple> in Chrome on OSX? The only word I can use to describe the experience is 'rage'.
      • andrewvc 13y ago
        True, but select multiple is horrible. It's easy to code but my god is it unusable.
        • mbell 13y ago
          No argument here, it sucks and I would never design something that way, but phpmyadmin uses it in several places which is where I run into it.
      • rdsubhas 13y ago
        <select multiple> sucks wherever it goes. and when the designer makes it smaller in height, it sucks ten times more.
        • 13y ago
  • jfb 13y ago
    What is user hostile is some application developer contravening the platform's UI conventions without a very, very good reason. "Because I want everything to work the same across platforms" is not nearly sufficient. I dislike this very, very much and I go out of my way to avoid using software that does this. This problem is particularly awful on the web, and this is a big part of the reason I avoid web applications wherever possible.
  • mercer 13y ago
    I respect your choice, but I think it's unfair in this case specifically (but in many other cases too) to say it's about 'pretty' and 'better advertising'. I read a lot on my mac, and I love the lack of scrollbar. It's one less 'element' on my reading experience (similar to almost all ebook readers not having chrome, like scrollbars and page numbers, or hiding chrome unless specifically requested). And because of how integral and 'decent' using the touchpad is (two finger scroll), I automatically scroll briefly to show the scrollbar in those few instances where I care about what position on the page I'm at. Of course, that's just one example, but I know many others who feel similarly. 'Apple knows best' doesn't just mean marketing and pretty, it often means decent choices that are good for a large percentage of people, and yes, you have to accept that. I find apple does do a lot of stuff that doesn't work for me. Even the lack scroll bars I rather hate when I use Finder (and don't get me started on that!). I use an android phone for that very reason. I don't always like the choices that apple makes for me, and I might reach a point where I opt out completely. I'm just saying that in this case I think apple made a risky but decent choice, that wasn't just about 'pretty' or 'marketing'.
• Camillo 13y ago
  I like having the scrollbars hidden. If I want to see my progress, I just put two fingers on my trackpad.
• super_mario 13y ago
  I would go even further and say that the lack of scroll bar in OS X has lead to lower uptake of read material. Here is what scroll bar does for me: 1. It gives me instant feedback about the size of the document (the shorter the scrollbar the bigger the document). 2. It shows me rough position in the document. 3. Provides reading context (I'm 35% into the document and I'm reading on subject X) which aids memorizing the material. I'm a mathematician and numbers are my thing. Some people use number memorizing technique where they walk through a familiar place and assign numbers to landmarks. And to recall numbers they walk the route again in their head and "read" the numbers off the landmarks. This is the technique those freaks that can recite thousands and thousand of decimals of Pi use. In effect the scroll bar does the same for me. It's my landmark and I assign topics to its position which allows me to remember better. If I want to quickly re-read something weeks later I can open the document and within seconds get there just by scroll bar position. And one could say search would work here too, but often times it does not because I don't remember exactly the string I want to find in the document (and some documents are not searchable). Once I upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, I found the default scroll bar setting extremely bothersome and my read content retention much much lower until I put the scroll bars back. So another anecdotal reason why dynamically showing/hiding UI elements is usually a bad idea.
  • minikites 13y ago
    I agree for plain documents, but tons of online articles list comments on the same page, so the scroll bar is almost a negative incentive to keep reading. "I've read this much of the article and I'm only 1/20th of the way down?" [user stops reading, unaware that there's 450 comments and the article is actually pretty short]
    • Corvus 13y ago
      I think comments themselves are the “negative incentive”, not the scroll bar. If comments were as informative and well-written as the article, then including them in the total article length is what you want because you would also want to read them. But, as we all know, comments are usually total garbage. The problem is not that they get included in the scroll bar, but that they get included with the article. We need to fix, or remove comments, not scroll bars.
• nsxwolf 13y ago
  I use the default scroll bars setting in OS X (Show scrollbars automatically based on mouse or trackpad movement), and I'm never not aware of the page length. I see it whenever I switch tabs, and I see it whenever I start to scroll. I always have an idea of how long the page is and I don't need a constant reminder of it. It's not like it's a precision instrument anyway - who can precisely gauge the length of an article based on scroll bar length and current window size? Rain Man? I can switch back to the always-on behavior if I want to, but I haven't wanted to.