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Any kind of power, including the ability to style buttons, text-areas or scroll-bars, can be abused. There's always some people that (quite reasonably) feel tha

Any kind of power, including the ability to style buttons, text-areas or scroll-bars, can be abused. There's always some people that (quite reasonably) feel that widespread abuse of that power justifies withdrawing it, and some people that (quite reasonably) feel that the few really good uses outweigh the potential for abuse.

scrollaway 12y ago
And what, exactly, is going to happen if people "abuse" scrollbar styling? Or button styling? Are we here to fight lame design fads by preventing people from building cool apps?
- thristian 12y ago
  When I come to a website, it's usually because I want some particular piece of information (like movie times or ticket prices) or to have some particular interaction (to find new, interesting stories or to play a game). Good design (and good designers) keep that goal in mind, and support it by keeping distracting elements (possibly including weird, mis-styled scrollbars!) to a minimum, allowing me to focus. Less-good designers just aim for making something more-or-less cohesive, and bad designers rarely aim higher than "something cool" whether or not it supports my goal. Mediocre and bad design hinders me from achieving my goal by hiding or obscuring basic tools of interaction like buttons or scroll-bars. Even good design can be a problem, if my goals do not align with what the designer had in mind (for example, the designer wants to make a good impression for first-time customers, but I'm trying to file a customer-support ticket). I appreciate that many of the people commenting on that ticket are just trying to make the world a more pleasant place, but some times I wish browsers had a button that would blast away all the custom styling of a page and just display the content in a standardised fashion (like the Reader mode many browsers have, but not just limited to long-form articles).
  - Drdrdrq 12y ago
    If you want such a button, search for bookmarlets. I usually install one that makes all fonts the same (large) size and one that forces all texts to B/W. Can't live without it.

scrollaway 12y ago

And what, exactly, is going to happen if people "abuse" scrollbar styling? Or button styling? Are we here to fight lame design fads by preventing people from building cool apps?

thristian 12y ago
When I come to a website, it's usually because I want some particular piece of information (like movie times or ticket prices) or to have some particular interaction (to find new, interesting stories or to play a game). Good design (and good designers) keep that goal in mind, and support it by keeping distracting elements (possibly including weird, mis-styled scrollbars!) to a minimum, allowing me to focus. Less-good designers just aim for making something more-or-less cohesive, and bad designers rarely aim higher than "something cool" whether or not it supports my goal. Mediocre and bad design hinders me from achieving my goal by hiding or obscuring basic tools of interaction like buttons or scroll-bars. Even good design can be a problem, if my goals do not align with what the designer had in mind (for example, the designer wants to make a good impression for first-time customers, but I'm trying to file a customer-support ticket). I appreciate that many of the people commenting on that ticket are just trying to make the world a more pleasant place, but some times I wish browsers had a button that would blast away all the custom styling of a page and just display the content in a standardised fashion (like the Reader mode many browsers have, but not just limited to long-form articles).
- Drdrdrq 12y ago
  If you want such a button, search for bookmarlets. I usually install one that makes all fonts the same (large) size and one that forces all texts to B/W. Can't live without it.