Re: [Usability] Scrolling virtually infinite windows



Magnus Bergman wrote:
>
In many applications the size of the data, and therefore also the
window, has no particular maximum size. This include vector based
drawing applications, mathematical graph or fractal viewers and midi
sequencers. Since it makes sense to scroll as much as you like in at
least one direction, the common scrollbar is not suitable, I believe. I
think a new widget is needed. What do other people think?

The most common application in this situation is a spreadsheet. For some unfortunate reason, spreadsheet apps always show you the maximum possible number of rows and columns, instead of automatically expanding and collapsing to just the extent you're using.

...
* The min/max values are constantly changed to reflect a portion of a
  canvas that contains "something interesting".

If there are definite limits to "something interesting", I suggest doing what Gnumeric does: use the scrollbar thumb to show the proportion of the extent of interesting things being shown, where the current insertion/navigation point is included as an interesting thing. So the further away you scroll from the other interesting things, the smaller the scrollbar thumb becomes.

(Fun fact: the Amiga's standard Workbench file manager also worked this way, because a window's scrollbars were always functional regardless of where its contents were.)

...
* There is no scrolling widget at all, and only the cursor keys and/or
  the mouse can be used to scroll the canvas.
...

I'd recommend this for applications like graphing tools and fractal generators, where there is no obvious limit to what is interesting. But be sure to implement an efficient zoom function, for quick navigation to another part of the canvas.

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/



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