Get Rid of Scrollbars | The Coffeehouse

When will we ever get rid of the damn things.. they are everywhere, I never use them, unless i have no choice... trusty middle mouse buttons takes care of scrolling in most sensibly programmed applications these days..

it seems that scrollbars only hinder my screenspace, hiding just that little bit extra content in every window frame of every application using them.

Here is my suggestion.. why can't we have OSD/Overlay Bars!

that only appear when you are actually scrolling(MMB) a window frame, or the Mouse is in the location of where I scrollbar would normally be. And it should be enforced that MMB be avaible to use for scrolling a window frame in any application that is using scrollbars. I noticed explorer(xp) doesn't bother adding it yet..

anyway seriously about time they get removed/improved.. how many more years to wait for some progress.

magicalclick

Nope, that's not good for me. I don't want to move my mouse over there to tell me, oh there is more content. Or oopses, scroll bar is disabled. Besides, scroll bar is so small.

Koogle

well who said they had to be gone out of view all the time.. jeesh

could have the arrow/buttons visible when there is content to view left/right/down/up etc... could even have the 'scrollbar' visible to show where you are in viewing the content.. or all of the buttons.. and just have the scrollbar background completly transparent....

but they would be ABOVE the content, like an OSD and that is the important thing.. no pushing content aside to make room for its ugly self.. just give the user options options options...

and have some vision damnit!

magicalclick

If that's the case, I would love to have my status bar transparent. And especially my menu bar (the back button bar and tab bar for IE7 case.) to be transparent; they took so much spaces.

TommyCarlier

If the content would be beneath the scrollbars, how would you interact with it? If you're in a word processor, and your scrollbar is above the text, you wouldn't be able to manipulate the text with the mouse. And scrollbars don't take up that much space, do they?

GEN3RIC

That is a personal preference I am sure very FEW would share. I am sure many might jump to support you until they go without it and realize that hiding 'trivial' information like where the scroll bar is or how far down you are, is certainly NOT trivial enough to force the user to go search for it.

Find creative ways to integrate it into the form and it won't be such an eyesore.

Yggdrasil

I do not have a middle button on my laptop's touchpad. You'd also be surprised at the number of people using old two-button mice.
Don't take a minor personal pet peeve (they took away 16pixels!!!) and conclude that a long-standing UI element has to go.

Zeus

Scrollbars are not just in the way, they are a great visual indicator for you. They show you where you are in a long document and it is also proportional to the length of the document in relation to the screen size. Small scroll bar means a really long document.

TommyCarlier

The only problem I have with the default scrollbar is that it doesn't display more information. Buzzword (the web-based word processor written in Flash) has a scrollbar that shows page numbers (very subtle). Some IDE's have code editors where the scrollbar has colored lines that indicate where lines have been added, modified or deleted.

Harlequin

Zeus wrote:

Small scroll bar means a really long document.

Now imagine scrolling a 30 foot long webpage with just your mouse wheel. It would get worn out mighty quick I would have to say.

Bas

Harlequin wrote:

Zeus wrote: Small scroll bar means a really long document.

Now imagine scrolling a 30 foot long webpage with just your mouse wheel. It would get worn out mighty quick I would have to say.

Who creates a 30 foot long webpage, anyway? Besides, I think your finger would get worn out, first. Unless you use a Logitech MX Revolution.

jsampsonPC

Bas wrote:

Harlequin wrote:

Zeus wrote: Small scroll bar means a really long document.

Now imagine scrolling a 30 foot long webpage with just your mouse wheel. It would get worn out mighty quick I would have to say.

Who creates a 30 foot long webpage, anyway? Besides, I think your finger would get worn out, first. Unless you use a Logitech MX Revolution.

Not sure what the selling poitn of the Logitech MX Rev is, but Mice today have fly-wheel scrolling, where you just flick it, and watch it scroll. Also, just about anybody can press their third button (press the scroll wheel down) and then simply scroll by positioning the mouse higher or lower on the page.

I like the idea of scroll bars being more overlay-ish...that would be cool. Probably a neat firefox extension if anybody is bored Tongue Out

Bas

jsampsonPC wrote:

Not sure what the selling poitn of the Logitech MX Rev is, but Mice today have fly-wheel scrolling, where you just flick it, and watch it scroll.

That's exactly what the selling point of the MX Revolution is. Tongue Out