Re: [Usability] question about scrollbars in cheese

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 11 Aug 2008, at 20:40, daniel g. siegel wrote:
> see screen1.jpg, there is much place left (where the red marked box  
> is).
> if there are enough items in it, scrolling gets activated and it looks
> like screen2.jpg (please ignore the other red marks and duplicate
> arrows).
>
> now, is it better to show the scrollbar always or to live with the
> space?

Well, those screenshots don't really offer a fair comparison, because  
they doesn't show what the scrollbar would show if there was only  
thumbnail :)  (From the behaviour of other apps, though, I'd assume it  
shows the scrollbar shaft taking up the full width of the scrollbar...?)

Personally I prefer to see the empty space than an "unscrollable"  
scrollbar-- it gives you immediate feedback that you're seeing  
everything that there is to see.  In an ideal world, perhaps the  
visual appearance of a "full" scrollbar would be less intrusive than  
it is today[1]-- maybe something to think about for gtk 3.0 :)

(As an aside, I'm slightly confused as to why you still have left and  
right buttons either side of the thumbnail view, in addition to those  
in the scrollbar?  That sends rather mixed messages to the user,  
perhaps suggesting that they would do different things.,,)

Cheeri,
Calum.

[1] E.g. see attached screenshot from Apple Mail, albeit for a  
vertical scrollbar--the trough is always shown, so you don't get  
content jumping around as the bar appears/disappears, but the buttons  
and shaft are gone so it has far less visual weight than a "full"  
scrollbar.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems