[haiku-development] Re: was: hrev44236 - src/servers/app
- From: Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:45:41 -0400
On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 8:27 PM, Matt Madia <mattmadia@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> After using a newer revision for a bit, I agree that the double arrows
> only at the bottom right corner may be better than either the usual
> single arrow at each end and the double arrows at both ends. It would
> keep the functionality of having scroll buttons, retain the same size
> for the sroller knob, and by having the buttons only in the bottom
> right corner, it would consolidate the possible mouse movements.
I don't hate this idea, but I don't love it either. Though it happens
to mimic the default setting in Mac OS X before Lion, if anyone cares.
Though they had the option to have a single arrow on each side (the
Windows style.)
But I still think the double arrows on both sides might be more
usable, because it minimizes how far the mouse has to move on average
from wherever it is to where the scroll buttons are, and then once
that movement has been made, either button can be used (the argument
Matt makes above.) With the heuristic to go down to single arrows on
smaller windows I don't think it has a downside. The reduction in the
possible size of the thumb or scroll gutter (or whatever you call the
middle area) is pretty small for most windows with the double arrows.
The heuristic to go down to the single arrows can be adjusted if
people feel it isn't right (at the moment you have to go pretty small
to activate it.)
Also while we are back on the topic of scrollbars: having used Mac OS
X Lion for the past few days, I think the "no scrollbars" (well
strictly speaking it is "hide until you scroll") thing they are
copying from the iPad kind of sucks on a desktop computer, even with
the multi-touch trackpad on the MacBook Pro I'm using. It is
especially annoying on certain web page elements, like long terminal
commands or code snippets, which need horizontal scrollbars because
you don't know you can even scroll them until you hover over them.
They just look cut-off and then you are surprised when you can scroll
them over. Sorry Apple, but that just sucks.
Of course I've just done some searching on the topic and apparently
there is a setting to always display them if you want, but the arrows
are probably gone forever on Mac OS. On the particular blog post I'm
reading a lot of people are complaining about the loss of the arrows
and giving several valid reasons to keep them, so to bring this back
to a Haiku topic I think the scroll arrows are here to stay in Haiku.
Desktop computers are not tablets, no matter what Apple and Microsoft
want.
The question is do we add options (which I know many people don't
like), do we vote and pick a default with maybe hidden options to
change it, or do we perform some usability testing to find the best
default (which we probably don't have the time or resources for?)
Right now, the easiest solution and what I will likely do for alpha 4,
is just to add a simple option to turn off the double arrows. Like it
or not that may be the best option in general, because it allows
people to have "Windows-style" scrollbars with arrows on each end or
"pretty close to OS X before Lion-style" scrollbars with double arrows
(they just happen to be on both sides.)
--
Regards,
Ryan
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