Elder scrolls
Elder scrolls
Simplifying the most recent scroll bar feels like a huge step backwards to me. It really is the epitome of modern tech needlessly boiling down to its basic visual aspects to emulate a “clean” environment for the users.
Give me back my scroll bar texture damnit
Not just scrollbars. Buttons, input fields, etc.
Dammit I sometimes have to search for elements I can interact with. Back in the day it was self explaining.
I recently had a complaint with a website:
“Users are having trouble scrolling!”
My response:
“Are they using the scroll wheel/directly scrolling with the touchpad, or using the scroll bar?”
They were, of course, using the scroll bar. I am now somehow responsible for design choices made at the level of the browser, because browsers have decided that the scroll bar should be nigh impossible to use. Yippee.
In case you weren’t aware, there are extensions that you can use to restore the older (better) UIs. Here are a couple:
There are probably some for other browsers as well. I don’t use them though. I instead wrote myself a tampermonkey script to change it:
if (!window.location.search.contains('useskin')) { var new_url = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.hostname + window.location.pathname; if (window.location.search == "") { new_url = new_url + "?useskin=monobook"; } else { new_url = new_url + window.location.search + "&useskin=monobook"; } new_url = new_url + window.location.hash; window.location.replace(new_url); }You can compare the available wikipedia styles on this page to see which one you like best: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=mono…
It’s really depressing how often I have to turn off CSS entirely just to view a webpage. I could of course always go into the inspector and turn off the bad CSS, but Gecko-based browsers fortunately have “View -> Page Style -> No Style” which is must easier and faster.
And seriously, whoever invented the font-weight CSS property can burn in hell. Ditto for whoever decided that we should only be allowed to read light grey text on slightly lighter grey background.
Its the epitome of technology that as it improves some things become obsolete.
Pretty much every mouse has a scroll wheel on them now. I very seldom click on a scroll bar now. So the design has changed with that consideration in mind.
It’s a design choice, not a question of obsolescence. If it were, we’d be talking about their decision on removing the scroll bar, not changing it.
At the very least the style change could have been optional.
There is still a need to indicate progress when scrolling even with a mouse wheel. So scroll bars are designed with that in mind. And there is still occasion that you may want to use it to brag the bar to a specific part of a page. But this is fairly rare, because how do you know what part of a page you want to go to before you’ve seen it?
Currently on my Firefox there is indeed no scrollbar displayed. If I use my mouse wheel a thin version appears to indicate progress while scrolling. If I move my mouse to the edge of the screen a wider version appears which is easier to interface with on the rare occasion I want to do that. This is an optimal interface given the hardware I have available.
On a phone or table the scrollbar will not be interacted with my clicking on it. It only appears to indicate progress.
The old scrollbar design is obsolete. Doesn’t make any sense on touchscreens and is a waste of screen space on desktops since people have scroll wheels now.
Obsolete doesn’t mean it no longer works, a horse and carriage still functions after all. Obsolete simply means there’s more optimal options available because of improvements in technology. The scrollbar on Firefox right now is more optimal because of newer technology. The scrollbars pictured are obsolete no matter how much nostalgia you might feel for them.
My friend, obsolescence as a concept can apply to a functional necessity. Obsolete doesn’t apply to a design choice like a texture on a window element.
If your entire point is that scroll bars aren’t necessary anymore, fine. If you’re going to type up a long winded response as to why scroll bars shouldn’t have the little lines on them anymore, you’re just being pedantic.
What I’m telling you is that it’s literally a visual element. I already said, it could be optional. Professing it as some sort of inevitably of ui change is just as stubborn.
Frankly, you’re coming off quite hostile about what is literally a texture. Equating this whole line of reasoning to “this is why technology changes” feels like grandstanding to justify defending an obscure ui decision for no other reason than you just prefer it.
Which by itself is fine. You’re allowed to prefer modern design ui. It starts getting ridiculous when you decide to tell other people why their preferences are wrong.
Frankly, you’re coming off quite hostile about what is literally a texture.
So it’s acceptable for you to call me a pedant, but I’m crossing the line when I say you’re being a curmudgeon? Ok.
What I’m telling you is that it’s literally a visual element. I already said, it could be optional.
It could be, but maintaining multiple designs isn’t free. To keep them all involves additional QA and bugfixes for every release and designing an interface to allow a selecting different designs. There’s a cost to this, and why bother? As you say it’s literally a texture, not a big deal. What’s your justification for a development team to put time and effort to maintain some old designs that are no longer optimal?
And this is a microcosm of all interactions with technology. Some people simply don’t like change, even when there’s good reason for the changes. Every technological improvement no matter how big or small comes with reactions similar to yours. It’s best not to impede technological improvements to please curmudgeons, because there’s no pleasing them. You can decide to be angry over every minor improvement in technology, but that’s just deciding to be angry for petty reasons. It’s best to try to understand technological changes rather than always being angry over them.
I mean you’re still upset over a change in the look of scrollbar, even after the reasons for the changes were explained. There are much bigger changes in technology coming, not sure how you’re going to handle it if a scrollbar change bothers you.
This conversation is really stupid. You win, the march of technology advances endlessly and changes will be made.
The beginning of this thread was a small vent that didn’t mean anything on a meme. Way to completely overblow your response there, captain verbose.
So it’s acceptable for you to call me a pedant
And lastly, yes.
Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter.
You are being the literal dictionary definition of pedantic. If I had known you were going to write several paragraphs over how a visual preference is irrelevant because of technological advances, I wouldn’t have engaged you.
On that note, I’m done engaging you. You beat me, I’ll eventually shrivel and die preferring something you don’t agree with. I hope this incredibly unnecessary conversation gives you satisfaction, and thanks for wasting my time to tell me that my preference doesn’t matter.
Later.
I’m not a huge fan of the flat button aesthetic. Give me the 3D-esque buttons and the translucent Aero window frames of Windows Vista.
Our GPUs, even the integrated ones, are powerful enough for it now.
It does suck that Linux copies the same terrible themes from Windows and that the older more accessible themes are becoming incompatible with modern Linux distros.
I just want a Linux that looks like a computer from 1998. Be it Windows, Mac OS X or native Linux.
Changing my theme won’t take me back to 1998, Vlad.
:(
The elder scrolls, online
I reckon SP2 was peak Windows. At the time, even as Windows 7 came about, IT people would always say how rock solid XP SP2 was, excellent driver support, ran everything you wanted at the time and rarely had issues.
I feel especially as a teen, I was so enamored with the allure of the Aero theme which was in Vista and eventually 7 that I was quick to dismiss XP.
Hind sight is 20/20, now I just run Linux because Windows is not what it used to be, now its a bloated monster.
I am not a fan of the general trend of de-buttoning.
Like… isn’t the entire point to make things consistent and intuitive? Make a clickable button visually distinct!
I hated the trend of flat buttons. Then they removed the buttons. Then they basically removed the entire scrollbar altogether.
At this point, I’d happily go back to the age of flat buttons. That’s how bad things have gotten…
I didn’t notice much since generally don’t have the arrow buttons and I wouldn’t use them. I use arrow keys, pagination keys, home/end key, scroll wheel/motion, drag the bar or click somewhere to jump there. Those buttons were always quite tiny.
But the behavior of my scrollbar looks like this: slides in on use or when the mouse gets moved; gets fatter when hovered
Though hiding stuff sucks indeed.
Well I mainly want the big scrollbars back. Even if these shadow scrollbars of 2px width don’t auto-hide,I still hate them.
I did find an addon at some point but it seems that it can’t override system settings but I can’t find where it should be a system setting to use these slim scrollbars.