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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

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
    In Safari, there's no visual indication that the content is horizontally scrollable. That's a problem. In Firefox, there's a big scroll bar. This scroll bar consumes more visual space than the content it scrolls. That's an absurdity. Scrollbars are a legacy UI element, a throwback to an era before scrolling mice and trackpads. You nicely illustrated a problem, but your proposed solution makes no sense on modern computers with dedicated scrolling gestures.
    - bhauer 13y ago
      > Scrollbars are a legacy UI element, a throwback to an era before scrolling mice and trackpads I think there's disagreement about that here, which in a manner of speaking, is behind the mixed opinions expressed in this thread. I for one do not seek a browser without a scrollbar even though my mouse has a scroll-wheel. Making very large adjustments to my scroll position using the wheel is annoying: either I spin the wheel repetitively or I click the wheel and enter a scroll mode where the pointer's distance from a start point adjusts a velocity of scroll that continues until I click again. Both are much more fussy than just picking the scrollbar tack up and dragging it to the point I want to reach. I don't even like that in IE 10 (Metro) the scrollbar disappears on my Surface Pro with its touch screen. Luckily for me, IE 10 (desktop) retains the scrollbar.
      - millstone 13y ago
        Good points. I should revise what I wrote to touch-enabled scrolling hardware. With a scroll wheel, both fine and gross movements are more difficult. The scroll wheel has a fixed set of positions, and is optimized for scrolling a line or two at a time. I also have never liked the modal "scroll mode" that you describe. With a magic mouse or scrolling trackpad, you get a much larger surface area available for scrolling, and there are more gradations. Inertia scrolling also makes it easy to scroll to the bottom or top of documents quickly: you can quickly "flick" to get to the bottom or top, which feels pretty natural. As a result, I find I interact with the scroll bar a lot less on my MacBook Air than I do on my scroll-wheel equipped desktop. I'm not sure what the situation is like on Windows though.
  - sbuk 13y ago
    I believe it to be neither and as a counterpoint ask if it really is a problem as you frame it. Scrolling on a touch enabled device, and all Apple devices are supplied touch enabled in one way or another, is performed differently. It is instinctive using OS X to scroll with 2 fingers. Obviously, this is a learned behaviour for adults that have been around computers for a while, but an intuitive one none the less. The old paradigm of scrollbar with arrows and thumb is redundant with touch input, to the point it actually gets in the way. What we have now in OS X and iOS serves more as a page location indicator that occupies the same position in the container.
  - Someone 13y ago
    Minor correction: on an iPad, you can also scroll that text with one finger.
    - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
      That is new. Apple has seen the light, finally.
- Myrth 13y ago
  Sometimes I'd like to have control over my full page representation and width across browsers and OSes, and scrollbars styling is missing or non-uniform or unreliable. EDIT: Scrollbars are inside viewport, meaning they're effectively part of my document, and I'd like to have a say how they look like, the same as form elements.
  - bhauer 13y ago
    Funny, I just replied to TheZenPsycho and mentioned in an aside that I recall older IE versions (and possibly recent ones as well) did allow the content author to apply styles to the scrollbar with CSS. I have had mixed feelings about that but in general, I would agree with you that it should be open to styling. I agree because I assume the scrollbar would retain its functionality. By styling it, I don't lose, for example, individual adjustment buttons at each extreme, drag to scroll, and paging by clicking the empty space on a Windows PC. On the other hand, if I style it, I'd probably want to do so in a context-sensitive manner, applying a specific look for mouse-enabled contexts and another for touch-enabled contexts. And then I end up have to make the same decisions Apple and Microsoft have had to. :)
    - calebegg 13y ago
      Not just IE; Webkit allows absurdly extensive CSS customization of the scrollbar. You can see it in action on Google+, or an overview of the features here: http://css-tricks.com/custom-scrollbars-in-webkit/ http://css-tricks.com/custom-scrollbars-in-webkit/
  - kelnos 13y ago
    Ugh, no. I want every UI control to look the same, everywhere. The scrollbars are not effectively a part of your document. That's not the case for a browser, or an office app, or anything that displays scrolling content. They're a property of the container, not the document.
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'.

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
  In Safari, there's no visual indication that the content is horizontally scrollable. That's a problem. In Firefox, there's a big scroll bar. This scroll bar consumes more visual space than the content it scrolls. That's an absurdity. Scrollbars are a legacy UI element, a throwback to an era before scrolling mice and trackpads. You nicely illustrated a problem, but your proposed solution makes no sense on modern computers with dedicated scrolling gestures.
  - bhauer 13y ago
    > Scrollbars are a legacy UI element, a throwback to an era before scrolling mice and trackpads I think there's disagreement about that here, which in a manner of speaking, is behind the mixed opinions expressed in this thread. I for one do not seek a browser without a scrollbar even though my mouse has a scroll-wheel. Making very large adjustments to my scroll position using the wheel is annoying: either I spin the wheel repetitively or I click the wheel and enter a scroll mode where the pointer's distance from a start point adjusts a velocity of scroll that continues until I click again. Both are much more fussy than just picking the scrollbar tack up and dragging it to the point I want to reach. I don't even like that in IE 10 (Metro) the scrollbar disappears on my Surface Pro with its touch screen. Luckily for me, IE 10 (desktop) retains the scrollbar.
    - millstone 13y ago
      Good points. I should revise what I wrote to touch-enabled scrolling hardware. With a scroll wheel, both fine and gross movements are more difficult. The scroll wheel has a fixed set of positions, and is optimized for scrolling a line or two at a time. I also have never liked the modal "scroll mode" that you describe. With a magic mouse or scrolling trackpad, you get a much larger surface area available for scrolling, and there are more gradations. Inertia scrolling also makes it easy to scroll to the bottom or top of documents quickly: you can quickly "flick" to get to the bottom or top, which feels pretty natural. As a result, I find I interact with the scroll bar a lot less on my MacBook Air than I do on my scroll-wheel equipped desktop. I'm not sure what the situation is like on Windows though.
- sbuk 13y ago
  I believe it to be neither and as a counterpoint ask if it really is a problem as you frame it. Scrolling on a touch enabled device, and all Apple devices are supplied touch enabled in one way or another, is performed differently. It is instinctive using OS X to scroll with 2 fingers. Obviously, this is a learned behaviour for adults that have been around computers for a while, but an intuitive one none the less. The old paradigm of scrollbar with arrows and thumb is redundant with touch input, to the point it actually gets in the way. What we have now in OS X and iOS serves more as a page location indicator that occupies the same position in the container.
- Someone 13y ago
  Minor correction: on an iPad, you can also scroll that text with one finger.
  - TheZenPsycho 13y ago
    That is new. Apple has seen the light, finally.
Myrth 13y ago
Sometimes I'd like to have control over my full page representation and width across browsers and OSes, and scrollbars styling is missing or non-uniform or unreliable. EDIT: Scrollbars are inside viewport, meaning they're effectively part of my document, and I'd like to have a say how they look like, the same as form elements.
- bhauer 13y ago
  Funny, I just replied to TheZenPsycho and mentioned in an aside that I recall older IE versions (and possibly recent ones as well) did allow the content author to apply styles to the scrollbar with CSS. I have had mixed feelings about that but in general, I would agree with you that it should be open to styling. I agree because I assume the scrollbar would retain its functionality. By styling it, I don't lose, for example, individual adjustment buttons at each extreme, drag to scroll, and paging by clicking the empty space on a Windows PC. On the other hand, if I style it, I'd probably want to do so in a context-sensitive manner, applying a specific look for mouse-enabled contexts and another for touch-enabled contexts. And then I end up have to make the same decisions Apple and Microsoft have had to. :)
  - calebegg 13y ago
    Not just IE; Webkit allows absurdly extensive CSS customization of the scrollbar. You can see it in action on Google+, or an overview of the features here: http://css-tricks.com/custom-scrollbars-in-webkit/ http://css-tricks.com/custom-scrollbars-in-webkit/
- kelnos 13y ago
  Ugh, no. I want every UI control to look the same, everywhere. The scrollbars are not effectively a part of your document. That's not the case for a browser, or an office app, or anything that displays scrolling content. They're a property of the container, not the document.

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'.