Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

In Linux/GTK, clicking in the gutter navigates to that position, and I have just discovered that Shift+clicking is equivalent to PageUp/PageDown, and that right-clicking seems to also be equivalent to PageUp/PageDown in Firefox, but scrolls at a fixed slow pace while the button is held in LibreOffice (15s per screenful at 6fps in Writer) and Inkscape (3s per screenful, smooth), and that middle-clicking is mostly PageUp/PageDown, but noop in Firefox; and I think those are the only apps I use (maybe even have installed) with regular scroll bars.

Oh yeah, one more, BibleTime which is Qt: it’s fairly Windowsy, click is PageUp/PageDown, right click is context menu (Scroll here, ---, Top, Bottom, ---, Page up, Page down, ---, Scroll up, Scroll down), Shift+click is same as click, middle-click is scroll here.

(These sorts of things are also one reason why you shouldn’t implement your own scroll bars in web pages: different platforms behave differently, and you can’t match it all sanely or sometimes at all.)

Strangely in Tor Browser I can middle click but not right click, despite it being based on Firefox and running in the same xfce session.

> different platforms behave differently, and you can’t match it all

Why do I care about matching it all? Do we need a scrollbar with all kinds of bespoke per-platform functionality? If I have a scrollbar, that people can use to scroll on all platforms, and it fits the visual aesthetic of my application instead of looking like an absolute dogshit eyesore, is that not good enough? What percentage of the population would you reckon is shift+clicking their scrollbars on a routine enough basis to notice a web-app that doesn't meet their expectations? 1%? 0.1%? 0.0001%? And in this fail case, when they shift+click the scrollbar and it doesn't behave as they expected, how much harm is really being caused? Will it ruin their day or will they maybe just go 'tch' and then use the scrollbar normally to achieve their scrolling needs like everyone else?

Apparently I have angered the scrollbar shift+clicking hordes. There might be dozens of you!

They'll just assume your site/app is broken, because their reference for what's correct is their platform. If they're annoyed enough, they go to a competitor unless it's a site/app mandated by their employer.

There is a literal 0% chance a single person in the entire history of our species has made the decision to switch to different software because shift-clicking the scrollbar didn't do what they expected it to. On the other hand, plenty of people are drawn to applications that look visually cohesive and are not an eyesore; not only because humans appreciate aesthetics, but also because visuals are an information channel and thus having non-obstrusive graphic design that guides your eyes to what matters has a very practical benefit.

I go out of my way to avoid using applications that ignore the macOS system preference for what clicking in the scrollbar does. People who care about the "feel" half of "look and feel" genuinely do exist. Janky scrolling behavior drastically lowers my opinion of an app, and in a web page it prompts immediate closure of the tab.

I didn't say a word about neglecting feel. Your argument appears to be that only Apple's anointed preference can count as "feel", and that anything that doesn't adhere to God-Emperor Jobs' vision is inherently janky. To which I say, username relevant.

"Feel" in the phrase "look and feel" refers to the behavior when interacting with the UI, as opposed to the aesthetic look. You asserted that literally nobody cares about a particular behavior that is the Windows equivalent to what has been a prominently-exposed configurable system preference in every version of Mac OS X/macOS.

Your weird hatred/obsession with Apple is preventing you from understanding that my argument wasn't even in favor of Apple's default behavior, but about software that doesn't respect the preference chosen by the end user who changes that setting away from the default.

I see. I was not aware of this system preference. Perhaps I would be if Apple didn't intentionally wall people out of developing for it unless they participated fully in the ecosystem by purchasing OS-locked hardware that they intentionally deter emulation of while requiring paying them for the privilege to develop for them. I won't ever see eye-to-eye with users who voluntarily opt into that environment, so if the scrollbar behaving slightly differently than expected but still reasonably well is truly a dealbreaker for somebody who stumbled onto my webapps, oh well!

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