monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
Scroll bars…
Even notice that the ‘thumb’ in a scroll bar moves in the opposite way that the page does that you’re scrolling? Try that now, grab the thumb on the right of this window and drag it down to see the page scroll up! Seems backwards to me. Like a better approach might be just a band along the right side of the page which you can grab like fly paper and when you move the mouse UP the page moves UP. Like that part is part of the page that you can grab and move physically.
It’s nice in some systems that the thumb also tells you how large the document is, as a proportion of the window. NeXT might have had that first. But I think I’d prefer a direct manipulation approach instead of the abstract control arrows and thumb to manipulate what I’m seeing. Give me a hand icon and let be ‘grab’ the page and move it the way I want to…
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26. April 2003 at 8:01 pm :
I’d rather use keyboard - any mousing = bad for wrists! But what you say makes sense. Moving thumb down to go up also makes sense to me, go figure.
2. May 2003 at 1:29 am :
I guess I’m forgetting one key advantage of a thumb which is you can scroll the entire length of the document by just moving the mouse the length of the window… and having a grab area would not let you move so quickly especially if the document was huge… you would need another way to scroll quickly.
5. May 2003 at 3:32 pm :
Some apps, like Classic Finder and Internet Explorer let you do that by command-dragging or whatever, but as you added, it doesn’t let you scroll 0-100% easily.
Plug for one of my favorite Mac OS X add-ons: Virtual scrollwheel! http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/ucontrol/ It’s free, too.