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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

I will truly never understand the mind of people who make decisions like "scroll bars should hide". They are like aliens to me, simply impossible to relate to.

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Crazy how often it backfires, too. I wasted 15 minutes a few weeks ago checking a user report that a PDF I hosted was missing exactly half its pages. Eventually, after walking it through my workflow step by step and it not breaking, I realized that it was simply the PDF viewer hiding the horizontal scrollbar which told you that it was a two-page layout. We had both fallen for it. Thanks, GNOME et al! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

(This also illustrates the fallacy with the sibling comment blandly asserting that scrollbars should 'simply be hidden when not necessary'.)

But thanks to the scrollbars being hidden, you got about 20 pixels more of your pdf! /s

Invisible scrollbars is probably the number one reason why I scream at the computer when I have to use Chrome instead of Firefox. At some point, Chrome removed the option to make the scrollbars visible. The UX people are completely insane.

Case in point: I tried to install ChromeOS Flex on one of my laptops. After booting from the USB drive, the installer went through a series of screens. On the 3rd or 4th screen, it would hang and make no progress. I rebooted and re-installed. Same thing. Tried a third time. Same thing.

On the 4th try, I accidentally discovered that the dialog box had an invisible scrollbar. WTF. If I two-finger scrolled on the dialog box after moving the mouse pointer into it, it would reveal some additional text on the bottom which indicated that it was not hanging but doing some work.

After I had finished installing ChromeOS, I discovered ChromeOS has a Settings option to "always display scrollbar", but the Chrome browser completely ignores that flag. Awesome. I blew away ChromeOS Flex on my laptop.

I desperately want real, thick scrollbars again. It is becoming close to impossible to use the mouse with browsers and websites.

I do understand why designers don’t wish to clutter their pretty UIs with navigation elements, but surely the need of users to use the site should outweigh the desire of the designers!

I’m the same, except the opposite - I don’t understand people who want it there permanently, instead of gracefully hiding when not needed.

I think the lesson here is people have different desires and priorities, and that’s ok.

I don't have a strong preference either way but the argument is the scrollbar isn't just for moving your position on the page but also for communicating to the user where they are on the page. If you hide it you're removing half it's functionality.

Traditional scrollbars always went away when they weren't needed. The problem now is going away when they are.

I don't think this is correct.

I distinctly remember some scroll-enabled UI elements on Windows displaying a completely greyed out scrollbar when the content wasn't actually scrollable.

Indeed, I can verify this today with PUTTYGEN.EXE even on Windows 11, where if I generate an RSA-2048 key there is an active scrollbar, while if I generate an Ed25519 key which is 1/8 the size, there is a greyed out scrollbar.

That having been said, I think this is the right way to do things. The greyed out scrollbar tells me that control is meant to be scrollable. So if I do something that changes the content, I can expect to be able to scroll it.

I originally had some text in there saying as much. But this always on capability has to be enabled by the author explicitly. It’s rare enough that I felt keeping my answer simple was more important.

“When not needed” is subjective. It’s okay to have an option to hide them when you prefer that, but we are now at a point where websites and apps are adding HTML-based position indicators and “scroll down to see more” labels because scrollbars have lost the ability to serve that function for most users.

I want them always because, if they are hidden, it's difficult to get them back when needed.

You need to get the cursor in the right zone (which is invisible, and quite narrow) and keep it there for long enough (so you have to slow down in order to not overshoot).

This is a pretty annoying thing to have to do many times every day.

Sometimes, for narrower scrollbars, it might take a few attempts until I succeed. It's distracting.

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