Re: Scroll bars.

[ketil ii uib no]

Gregory Maxwell <gmax@nightshade.z.ml.org> writes:

> Please, dont doom yet another interface with the same old stupid
> scrollbars used in almost ever GUI out there.

Especially not the Windows type which jumps back if you stray with the
mouse.  I hate that!

> They are inneficent and inconvient!

When you mention it, yes, I agree they could be better.

> Normally scroll bars are placed on the right side, with little up and down
> arrows on the top and bottom...

> This is silly.. The mouse is more often on the left (it's where the menus
> are and where text starts).. Also, going down then back up requires alot
> of mouse movement..

Hmm..you could let the user configure this, couldn't you?

> It would be MUCH more sane to place them on the left and put the up and
> down (and perhaps a page up and down) button all togeather on the top or
> bottom..

And this.  However, I observe that:

*   scrolling up and down by dragging the little marker is painful if
there's a lot of area to scroll (i.e. the directory listing contains
lots of files)  Precision is lost.
*   scolling with line-up or line-down buttons is to cumbersome, I never 
use it.
*   scrolling with page-up and page-down by clickin in the scrollbar,
but outside of the marker causes me to miss the point I was at, unless
there's some visible anchor, and besides, it doesn't seem like an
intuitive way to do it.  (Inconsistent amount of scrolling)
*   using the keyboard (arrows, pageUp/Dn) is much more convenient and
faster in most cases.

One possible addition would be for the user to grab the text pane with
the mouse and scroll it directly.

If I could do that, and have the keyboard work, I could easily do
without scrollbars entirely (perhaps except for showing the extent of
the pane, perhaps a thermometer-like widget would suffice?   As a
themeability option?  [XEmacs has a neat, slim and discreet scrollbar -
it may look different with other configs than mine, though.]).

> I've tried chatting with someone with KDE a long time back... But he was
> close minded.. Saying that it was too diffent from other GUIs

Well, there's the main difference I perceive between KDE and Gnome.  KDE 
wants a well known feel to a smooth desktop, Gnome wants to extend and
explore GUI possibilities.  Don't flame me, it's just an opinion.

~kzm
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants