Scrollbars

[Mikus Grinbergs <mikus bga com>]

When I upgraded from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18, scrollbars for me became 
almost unusable.  The GTK Theme that GNOME by default installs omits the 
scrollbar-end arrowheads. and alters how the screen behaves when the 
user clicks in the scrollbar but outside of the slider.


I'm used to using a GUI (i.e., the scrollbar) to vertically move my 
view, whenever the amount of data exceeds window-height.  Not having 
arrowheads on the scrollbar means I can no longer use a 'click' (in the 
arrowhead) to consistently move the view by just a "line" amount.

Much worse is the new default behavior when the user clicks in the 
non-slider portion of the scrollbar -- the view moves to the 
(proportional?) position within the data that corresponds to the 
position of the click within the scrollbar.  I could always achieve that 
effect by __dragging__ the slider to that position within the scrollbar.

  PLEASE don't subvert __clicking__ so as to produce that same effect.

What I (and I expect other users as well) used a 'click' within the 
scrollbar for (without precise positioning) was to move the view 
CONSISTENTLY by one "screen" amount.  [By that I mean that every time I 
'click' like that, the view moves to the data __adjacent__ to what I was 
viewing before.  No "gaps" occur to the material I am viewing - my new 
view "begins" from where the previous view "ends".]

With the Fedora 18 default Theme, using a GUI to consistently move my 
view by one "screen" amount is no longer practical - I would need to 
position my 'click' PRECISELY within the scrollbar, and even then would 
have no assurance that no "gap" occurred between my previous view and 
the current view.  [And if I have my cursor in the window, why should I 
have to switch to the keyboard whenever I wanted to "page" my view of 
the data?]


Supposedly GNOME 3.6 scrollbars behave the same as GNOME 3.4 scrollbars. 
 But I had no problems in Fedora 17 (GNOME 3.4) -- my scrollbar 
problems started when I installed Fedora 18 (GNOME 3.6).
I've seen in Forums the recommendation to use a different GTK Theme - 
doing so ought to restore scrollbars to function as they previously did. 
 But there seems to be a deficiency in the Fedora 18 GNOME Tweak tool - 
it offers only Default Theme and High Contrast Theme.

Removing the GUI "consistent paging" ability (when the user clicks 
anywhere within the scrollbar), by providing a different behavior by 
default, does not make the user's life easier.


mikus