Re: [Usability] Scrollbars with Popups

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 03:37:50AM +0200, Alberto Caso wrote:
> 
> 	I think it's a great idea, as it makes scroll buttons a lot bigger
> (virtually) and unclutters the screen.

Thank you.

 
> 	But it has an important drawback: it depends on the mouse to hover the
> scrollbar, and nowadays more and more devices don't have a mouse, but a
> direct pointing system (e.g. touch screens). Any idea on how to extend
> this proposal to also handle that use case?

What other things than touch screens qualify as direct pointing system?

With touch screens, you should better have an adapted GUI, anyway.
Different sizes and adressing that the finger / hand obscures elements 
below it.

Arrow buttons might be rather uninteresting on a touchscreen, as it's 
easy and direct to just drag the bar. This part would just work.

I'm considering to leave a gap between the arrow buttons, to make it 
more clear that an action on the bar is possible and to make a 
click-auto-repeat on the arrow buttons easier (without a gap, one would 
have to wait past a delay to discern click-hold from click-drag).
Such a gap would also help with touchscreen use (if large enough for a 
finger :)

With multitouch, the first contact could allow dragging and also enable 
target areas above and below it for a second contact to trigger stepwise 
up or down. Should work with thumb and index finger. Place index finger 
first, then thumb for scrolling downwards, thumb first followed by index 
finger for upwards scrolling.
Allthough a 2 finger contact could be useful for zooming by changing 
the distance.

But of course the new scroll widget could have a touchscreen mode, 
disabling the popup and adding arrow buttons on the ends (or a pair 
on one end). Allowing a drag on the whole area would be the remaining 
difference to current scrollbars.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

Thorwil's Design for Free Software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com