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Comment by fbrchps | Hacker News Reader

> highly opinionated solutions as something definite even though it has a narrow focus on what the author cares about

Most users either don't have such strong opinions about their scroll bars, or would prefer it looks coherent with the application, or OS-native (your preference). But I can almost guarantee the larger group of non-technical users will have never thought about the styling of their scrollbars for more than a few seconds.

Also in terms of accessibility, so long as they're doing CSS-only changes, and the bar is sized compliant and has proper focus states, assistive technology won't care.

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But I can almost guarantee the larger group of non-technical users will have never thought about the styling of their scrollbars for more than a few seconds.

I think you're saying that this means it doesn't matter, but it actually increases the importance of respecting the users choices. Anyone who has changed their scrollbar has done so because it's important enough to them to bother. They've put effort in. That means there is far more likely to be a good reason not to override their preferred styling.

> But I can almost guarantee the larger group of non-technical users will have never thought about the styling of their scrollbars for more than a few seconds.

So you argument in favor of breaking the UIs of the non-technical users - who don't know that it is not their computer working wrong, but rather the site operator deliberately making things inaccessible - is users don't know that it is you breaking things? Sounds rather horrible.

> Also in terms of accessibility, so long as they're doing CSS-only changes, and the bar is sized compliant and has proper focus states, assistive technology won't care.

Eh, it depends on your audience. My father has very poor eyesight. He doesn't use any assistive tools (e.g. screen readers or magnifiers), but he does need his computer-reading glasses. Accessibility isn't just ADA compliance and/or screen reader support.

Same argument for why we should use tabs over space when accessibility seems squarely focused on the blind and screen readers when visual impairment is a broad spectrum. My eyesight isn’t ‘bad’, but it isn’t what it used to be and with so many code bases using 2-space indentation, I wonder why this isn’t configurable as I have a lot of difficulty discerning the contrast when it’s so shallow.

Any modern IDE will allow you to display 2-space indentations however you wish.

Where is this option in Visual Studio 2022, and Xcode?

They won't care as long as it's consistent. The only way for it to be consistent is for people not to touch it.

Just because most users don't think about it doesn't mean it doesn't impact them and that they should be ignored. The very fact that they can't fight for the solution that best benefits them means the onus is on us as designers and programmers to do that for them, instead of handwaving their needs away.

Considering the trend now is to straight up remove scroll bars (why the fuck...), I expect conversations like this will become moot in the not so distant future.

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