
Evolution of the Scrollbar - bookofjoe
https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/
======
cannam
Would love to have had the Open Look and Athena scrollbars.

Open Look was super cool looking, but awful to use. Athena was (is?) awful
looking and lacked any affordances for beginners, but was terrific for expert
use.

I am fond of Open Look, and keep a copy of the Open Look GUI Functional
Specification (Addison-Wesley, 1989) on my shelf, much as some people venerate
the Apple HIG, except that mine is much less useful.

Here's a nice post that came up in a search for the Open Look scrollbar:
"Evolution and design of scrollbars"
[https://pim.famnit.upr.si/blog/index.php?/archives/153-Evolu...](https://pim.famnit.upr.si/blog/index.php?/archives/153-Evolution-
and-design-of-scrollbars.html)

~~~
DonHopkins
Open Look scrollbars would be impossible to implement properly in the web
browser without using the Pointer Lock API that let you "warp" the mouse
cursor position, because when you click on the elevator or cable, the elevator
cab actually pushes the cursor up and down with it.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Loc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_Lock_API)

Here's a demo of Open Look scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets"
video, which he produced for the ACM CHI 1990 conference. It also has demos of
many other kinds of scrollbars and other widgets. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN
LOOK, 1988):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=12m57s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=12m57s)

>All the Widgets (Fixed v2) - 1990: This was made in 1990, sponsored by the
ACM CHI 1990 conference, to tell the history of widgets up until then.
Previously published as: Brad A. Myers. All the Widgets. 2 hour, 15 min
videotape. Technical Video Program of the SIGCHI'90 conference, Seattle, WA.
April 1-4, 1990. SIGGRAPH Video Review, Issue 57. ISBN 0-89791-930-0.

When I was working on The NeWS Toolkit at Sun (an Open Look toolkit
implemented in PostScript), Jonathan Payne implemented the Open Look
scrollbars, and I thought they had such a cool interesting 3D shape with their
elevator, cable, anchors, ridges and arrows, that I carved an 3D Open Look
scrollbar for him out of soap as a birthday gift. (He also implemented JOVE:
Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs for Unix, and JED: Jot EDitor for TNT.)

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_NeWS_Toolkit_scr...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_NeWS_Toolkit_screen_snapshot.gif)

Google Wave also had elevator-like scrollbars with arrows on the elevator, but
since they were implemented in the web browser without the Pointer Lock API,
they could not push the cursor like Open Look scrollbars, so they implemented
a weird shadow and didn't move the elevator until you moved the mouse away,
with was very confusing to users:

[http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scroll...](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/)

>Using Google’s scrollbars, it’s also possible to scroll by clicking, but
since the arrows are attached to the thumb, that creates a bit of a problem.
Typically, the thumb indicates the scroll position. But since you can’t move
the thumb while the user is clicking on it, Google has introduced a second
element, a «shadow» that is displayed below the thumb. This shadow indicates
the current scroll position:

[http://ignorethecode.net/upload/217/click_scroll_google.mp4](http://ignorethecode.net/upload/217/click_scroll_google.mp4)

>If the user moves the mouse away, the thumb will eventually move to the
shadow.

>I did not notice this until a commenter on Hacker News pointed it out. He
also notes that the scrollbars seem to perform poorly with longer waves.

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=944012](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=944012)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100308003557/http://www.comple...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100308003557/http://www.completewaveguide.com/guide/Master_Wave's_Interface#The_Non-
Standard_Wave_Scrollbar)

>The Non-Standard Wave Scrollbar

>Figure 6-1. Unlike the scrollbar in your web browser, Wave's scrollbar is the
same height no matter how long the list it's scrolling, which keeps the up and
down arrows always the same short distance away.

>The scrollbar on the right side of Wave's panels works a bit differently than
the scrollbar in your web browser. Like most scrollbars, you can drag it up
and down to scroll, or click its up and down arrows to move it. Unlike most
scrollbars, the Wave scrollbar's height doesn't change. It's always the same,
small size, which puts its up and down arrows in close proximity to one
another, as shown in Figure 6-1. Google's intention is to benefit people
accessing Wave on mobile devices or netbooks with a limited mousing area, but
it has thrown off some preview users.[2] Google explains "the deal" with the
scrollbar in Wave's Help section:[3]

>You might find that the scrollbar in Google Wave behaves a little differently
from scrollbars in other Google products. To use it, you can drag the bar or
you can use the arrows on either end of it—clicking the arrows without moving
your mouse allows you to very quickly scroll up and down the page.

>Even at this early stage, at least one developer has created a Google Chrome
extension that reverts Wave's custom scrollbars to Chrome's native scrollbars.

Google Wave: Scrolling. How to use the scrollbars in Google Wave.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxt2LXCSw5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxt2LXCSw5Q)

~~~
erikpukinskis
I do recommend, for anyone who is interested in low level WIMP interaction
design.... play with teleporting pointers! Not because it will ever work...
it’s too weird to really use in a production system. But just try it because
it’s really an interesting experience to have your pointer move while you use
it.

It turns the pointer more into a physical object on the screen.

But try it in a place it makes sense. This scroll bar is an example. I first
tried it in a zoomable interface where I wanted the pointer to stay in a
consistent “local position” within a window, even though the window was moving
and changing size.

Just a really interesting thing for me to feel as a UI designer at the time.

------
bangonkeyboard
Clicking in the gutter is inaccurate. On Macs, it advances by page, and in
later versions animates; only option-clicking jumps the thumb to that
position.

~~~
archagon
OMG! TIL about option-clicking the scrollbar. And here I thought I'd option-
clicked everything by now...

------
ajnin
Is the "Mac OS Lion" version accurate ? If so it seems wildly inferior to the
other versions :

\- it's hidden, meaning you don't know where to put your mouse to interact
with it

\- it's hidden, so you don't even know in the first place if there is more to
the current window than what you see, and how much

\- it's animated, making you lose time watching a pointless distracting
animation every time you need to use the scrollbar

\- it lost the "previous position shadow" feature that older scrollbars had,
but it's not the only one to have made that choice

~~~
Causality1
Change is driven by marketing demands as much as by genuine innovation. For
example, with Windows 10 Microsoft removed the outlines from everything so
almost everything in the UI blends together with everything else. The lack of
contrast and distinct borders makes user interaction slower and less accurate
but hey, it looks really sexy in the advertisements.

~~~
disconcision
> makes user interaction slower and less accurate

Does it? The windows flat UI gets continuous flak on HN and I'm wondering if
there's any evidence for it being less usable, beyond opinion.

~~~
barneygale
Bevels provide information about the relationships between controls. Visually
"deeper" (concave) controls provide more detailed, contextual information.
Buttons are convex because they act on the surface to which they're attached.

Windows 2000 professional was a high point for the language of UI design, if
not the individual implementations...

~~~
disconcision
I've heard explanations like this, yes, but I haven't seen any empirical
evidence supporting the conclusion that flat interfaces are harder to use or
learn or are prone to misclicks etc.

For my part I've used each version of Windows since 2.0, and have not noticed
any decline in usability with the advent of the flat style in windows 8.
Personally, I mildly prefer the current design language to the windows 2000
one (although I also consider that a local maximum), mostly due to the lack of
visual noise. Personally, I have not experienced any of the usability
frustrations evoked in this thread.

As someone increasingly moving towards UI design though, I'm willing to check
personal preferences against hard data.

------
jspash
I'm going to nitpick the title a bit. (Please downvote if inappropriate)

But this isn't evolutionary. It's a random sample of totally different takes
on the same UI component. If scrollbars truly were designed in an evolutionary
process, then all OS's would build upon the previous version and improve (or
regress) from that. Or maybe I'm being too pedantic?

~~~
thristian
The site depicts a linear progression, but (like most things) it's more like a
tree.

You can draw a line from Star → Lisa → System 1 → Windows 1 → Windows 3 →
Windows 95, and maybe Windows 1 → NeXTstep, but it's more likely to be System
1 → NeXTstep.

MacOS 8's scrollbar comes from Win95, System 7, and NeXTstep (it was an option
to have the arrow buttons at one end, like NeXT, or at both ends, like System
7), and MacOS X's scrollbar comes from MacOS 8's.

Windows XP's scrollbar comes from MacOS 8 (the grab handle), MacOS X (the
bitmap-all-the-things theme) and Win95 (in function), and of course Vista's
scrollbar follows on from that.

MacOS Lion's scrollbar actually comes from MacOS X and the conventions of
mobile devices, which is a whole other lineage not even present.

And the Windows 10 scrollbar comes from MacOS Lion (and the minimalist design
trend in general) and Vista.

~~~
eschaton
The Windows 95 look and feel is almost entirely attributable to NEXTSTEP.

Proportional scroll bars on the Mac go back to Lisa and were used in GS/OS
before Mac OS. Windows had nothing to do with their adoption.

~~~
kick
That's false, actually. The Windows 95 look can be tied to IBM doing a massive
amount of market research for their previous operating systems efforts; the
monotone and 3D look was found to be the least-offensive UX globally.

~~~
wtallis
And the _feel_ /function of a Windows 95 scrollbar differs from that of a NeXT
scrollbar in almost every way possible.

------
lproven
Needs more RISC OS.

[https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/riscos37](https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/riscos37)

But it's not so much how they looked, as how they worked. Bidirectional
scrolling using a 3-button mouse, so elegant that you didn't need a scroll
wheel.

~~~
swiley
I personally liked plan9’s scrolling quite a bit, I have no idea if RISCOS is
the same.

------
tammer
I find it odd to the point of unsettling how fresh and unique XP’s design
feels today.

~~~
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
Don’t forget cohesive. I still remember how almost all my applications changed
to match the OS styling when I upgraded from 98->XP, it felt like a brand new
computer. It’s difficult to imagine that these days, with most everything
implementing custom versions of the OS controls.

I think the only ecosystem still trying to match the system’s design is iOS,
but given how each version is regressing in its usability, I’m not sure that’s
going to last.

~~~
the_pwner224
KDE has a comprehensive suite of Qt applications which all adhere to the
system theme. It also uses client-side decorations so all windows have the
same decorations. Most popular Qt themes also have a corresponding GTK theme
to make the rare GTK application (for me mainly Qalculate, Firefox, GIMP, and
Gnome's Simple Scan) look and behave very similarly.

Fonts also all match in all desktop applications, and I have configured
Firefox to ignore CSS fonts and use the same ones as the rest of the system.

I internally laugh every time somebody gets excited about a new dark theme for
their application/OS - like they're coming out of a cave into the 19th
century, while I'm living in the future.

There's a plasma-integration plugin for Firefox which makes scrollbars in FF
match the Qt scrollbars! It also changes the Firefox scrollbars to click-to-
warp instead of click-to-pgup/pgdn, to match with the rest of the system (I
believe this happens in all GTK apps though).

There is only one inconsistency I have noticed - in Qt apps you can
scrollwheel in inactive windows (configurable if desired), but sometime in the
last year GTK changed so that this is no longer possible - I need to switch
window focus to scroll GTK windows, except for Firefox. Also Electron apps
stand out very much and feel unnatural to use - especially the theming and
animations in the File/Edit/View menubar.

------
makecheck
One they’re missing is the Apple IIGS (GSOS).

Oddly, at the time it was more useful than its Mac equivalent because it had
proportional indicators.

~~~
AndrewStephens
The Amiga Intuition scrollbars were proportional as well. Proportional
scrollbars took a long time to catch on. I remember being quite confused by
Macs and Windows of the time, coming from the Amiga it seemed like an obvious
idea.

------
jameskilton
Why doesn't scrolling work on this page?

~~~
sorenjan
Horizontal scrolling works.

~~~
RussianCow
Ironically, there is no scrollbar, though.

------
caiobegotti
I wonder if
[https://twitter.com/ilistes/status/250658949467099136](https://twitter.com/ilistes/status/250658949467099136)
was the inspiration for this (from 2012). I wish there were more scrollbars
from cool Unix window managers, BeOS and such. Now that scrollbars are almost
done it's a really nice idea to document not just their existence but also
their behavior.

~~~
eschaton
X window managers don’t supply the widget set used within windows, they only
provide exterior window chrome. You need a matched pair of window manager and
widget set to get a coherent UI. This is the result of the “mechanism, not
policy” design flaw at the heart of X.

------
mixmastamyk
My favorite was the SGI scroll bar. It looked/worked like classic Windows but
also had middle-click direct scroll and would leave a shadow of where it was
on drag so it was very easy to return to where you were. “Modern” scrollbars
are much less functional.

------
flowerlad
A more comprehensive history:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-
visua...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943552/scroll-bar-visual-
history-30-years)

------
protomyth
I do miss NeXTSTEP since it had the scrollbar on the left instead of the
right.

~~~
stevedekorte
And the arrow controls next to each other so you didn't have to move the mouse
to the other side to adjust the bar slightly in the other direction.

------
masswerk
Two things which may be nice to add:

\- adjusting the display for LISA none-square pixels. Scrollbars were about
the same size as on the Mac. (A few applications had additional features, like
a window splitting widget or dedicated buttons for page wise scrolling, like
the Star interface.)

\- including inactive window states and states for active non-scrolling
windows (where the content doesn't exceed the viewport), since there were even
more differences in those states and how they were signaling to the user.

~~~
widowlark
Another thing to add: Make the damn thing scroll horizontally - for a website
showcasing scrollbars, it sure doesn't work with mine.

------
soylentgraham
I feel like we will never have a UI better than win 95 ever again.

~~~
blt
Strong statement, but I agree that the Win95 scrollbar looks "right". Probably
just an artifact of using Win95 during our formative years.

------
speps
I like that it also shows hover effects. However, I'm disappointed it doesn't
have more obscure variants or even earlier variants.

------
Aearnus
This is an awesome project. I have 2 questions:

* Did every OS treat clicking in the blank space above and below the scroll bar the same, like this website seems to suggest?

And,

* Why'd early versions of Apple's OS have the buttons on the bottom? What was the rationale & why'd they give in and move them to the top? I kind of like the bottom buttons.

~~~
thristian
Treating "click in the gutter" as "page up" or "page down" is pretty common,
but at least on modern Linux desktops (GTK+3) it means "scroll to here".

On very old Unix desktops (classic Athena widgets), left-clicking anywhere on
the scrollbar meant "scroll down" \- if you clicked near the top, it would
scroll down a little, if you clicked near the bottom it would scroll down a
lot, and if you held down the mouse button it would keep scrolling at that
speed. Right-clicking meant "scroll up". You had to middle-click to actually
move the visible bar to a particular point.

The point of putting the scroll buttons together was to make small adjustments
easier. Scroll buttons are fairly small targets, and the other end of the
scroll bar can be a long way away, so if the other scroll button is at the
other end, it can take a while to travel precisely to it since humans can make
small, accurate movements and large, inaccurate movements but not large,
accurate movements. On the other hand, if the other button is right next door,
you can get there quite easily.

------
pubby
I was hoping they'd poke some humor at what modern websites do to the
scrollbar. Scrollbars have worked well for so many years, why must web
developers change it to an un-standardized mess? I'm talking about features
like css-enabled smooth scrolling and infinite scroll everywhere.

------
kccqzy
I still remember in the early 00's there were software haphazardly ported from
classic Mac OS to Windows and they retained the non-proportional scrolling
indicator. It felt very off on Windows.

------
Razengan
Maybe there could be a universal gesture that instantly brings up a minimap of
the document at the cursor position, like right-click for context menus.

------
ilrwbwrkhv
Wish there was a way of getting mac os x 10 lickable scroll bar back. Does
anyone know any hacks to get it working on latest mac os?

~~~
crooked-v
Assuming you meant "clickable" rather than "lickable"...

System Preferences, General, Show scroll bars, Always.

~~~
DonHopkins
No, he literally meant "lickable". c(;

[https://www.quora.com/When-MacOS-X-was-announced-Steve-
Jobs-...](https://www.quora.com/When-MacOS-X-was-announced-Steve-Jobs-said-We-
made-the-buttons-on-the-screen-look-so-good-youll-want-to-lick-them-When-was-
the-last-time-you-licked-the-screen-of-an-Apple-product)

>“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them.”
Steve Jobs on Mac OS X’s Aqua user interface, January 2000

[https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000...](https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/01/24/272281/index.htm)

>Everyone expected him to unveil a new computer or two. Instead, Jobs showed
off a flashy, completely redesigned Macintosh operating system called Mac OS X
[ten], which, when it's delivered this summer, will put a glossy new face--
graphical user interface, that is--on the Mac. "We made the buttons on the
screen look so good you'll want to lick them," he says. (Some of the design
elements he approved help illustrate these pages.) Just as provocative was a
set of jazzy and useful free Internet services available immediately--online
data-storage space, build-'em-yourself personal home pages and Websites, and a
new kind of parental-control filter to keep kids from seeing the wrong kinds
of Web content, to name just a few. These Web services, which Apple calls
iTools, are designed to work exclusively with Macintosh computers, not PCs or
any other kind of Internet device. Jobs' shrewd goal: to use the Internet to
make Apple's computers show up Wintel PCs rather than merely stay even.

------
slowenough
This is awesome. And interactive! So cool. Labor of love to recreate these old
UI affordances in HTML.

------
kick
It doesn't include the most superior scrollbar, Plan 9's.

Really interesting, though.

------
narven
Just love the "Mac OS X Lion" version

------
ggm
X10R4 deserved an entry as did sunview

------
z3t4
I don't think the scrollbar is needed in the UI. So in 2020 there might be no
scrollbar. What do you think? Why are scrollbars needed?

~~~
dsr_
Scrollbars serve three purposes:

\- they offer an affordance (a control) for moving a viewport.

\- they offer the indication that there is more to see than just the current
viewport

\- they can offer an indication of where your viewport is in the overall data
window, and optionally what percentage of the overall data window is covered
by your current viewport.

------
ngcc_hk
When is the scroll bar start to disappear and have to trigger it, find it and
chase after it. When I wonder!

------
DonHopkins
Here's a discussion about disappearing scrollbars on c2 about "Long Enough To
Force An Elevator Into The Scrollbar Discussion" that mentions Smalltalk-80's
and Squeak's scrollbars, that float just OUTSIDE of the window, and DISAPPEAR
when not required, so they don't taking up extra horizontal space in the
window, or re-flow the text when they appear and disappear. Interlisp-D also
had this kind of disappearing scrollbar.

[http://wiki.c2.com/?LongEnoughToForceAnElevatorIntoTheScroll...](http://wiki.c2.com/?LongEnoughToForceAnElevatorIntoTheScrollbarDiscussion)

>Squeak floats the scrollbar just outside the window when necessary, and only
when the mouse floats over the pane. Bizarre. Apparently you can change this,
but the magic scrollbar is as described.

>Bizarre by today's standards, yes. But also traditional and historical.
Squeak's scrollbars, not surprisingly, are just like Smalltalk-80's
scrollbars, which pre-dated all of the modern scrollbars. Commercial
Smalltalks like VisualWorks allow you to change this and other look and feel
items (didn't see a way to do it in Squeak right off). IMHO Smalltalk's
scrollbars are easy to use and more powerful once you get used to them. For
example you don't have to move your cursor up to an arrow button to scroll a
line at a time. -- RandyStafford

Here's a demo of Smalltalk disappearing scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The
Widgets" (Xerox PARC & ParcPlace Systems Smalltalk, 1977):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=3m56s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=3m56s)

>In this version of Smalltalk, the scrollbars pop up when the mouse pointer
enters the window. The scrollbar has three regions. The one on the right:
clicking there causes the text to move up. The one on the left: causes it to
move down. And the one in the center can be used to scroll smoothly to
arbitrary portions of the total text. The square rectangle with respect to the
entire scrollbar indicates the fraction of the text that you see.

Here are some illustrations and a description of the disappearing scrollbars
from Smalltalk-80, The Interactive Programming Environment, by Adele Goldberg,
Xerox PARC:

[http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgra...](http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv.pdf)

p. 33> Figure 2.1

p. 35> Figure 2.2c

p. 37> A scroll bar is a rectangular area, displayed adjacent to the left side
of the view it controls. The scroll bar appears in the active view only when
the cursor is actually inside the view. If you move the cursor outside the
view (without pressing a button), the scroll bar will disappear. It will
appear as soon as you move the cursor back inside the viewing area. Thus the
scroll bar is a useful visual cue that the view will notice your typing or
button pressing. Scroll bars appear only in those views for which scrolling is
appropriate, typically in any view in which text can be edited or in list
menus.

p. 38> Figure 2.3

The first hidden scrollbars were actually implemented in Bravo at Xerox PARC
in 1974. They were just an blank region at the left edge of the window, that
changed the cursor to an arrow icons when you entered the region and pressed
any of the three buttons.

Here is a demo of Bravo scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets" (Xerox
PARC Bravo, 1974):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=3m06s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=3m06s)

>When the cursor enters Bravo's scrollbar, it changes shape to indicate that
scrolling is enabled. Each of the three mouse buttons corresponds to a
scrolling operation. When the mouse is depressed, the cursor shape indicates
the enabled scrolling action. When the mouse button is released, the command
is invoked. Scroll up moves the line of text adjacent to the cursor to the top
of the document window. Scroll down moves the line of text at the top of the
document window to be adjacent to the cursor. Thumb causes the entire document
to jump to the location in the document corresponding to the vertical position
of the scrollbar. The boxed arrow indicates the location in the document that
is currently visible.

Here's a demo of Interlisp-D disappearing scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The
Widgets" (Xerox Corporation Interlisp-D, 1980):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=4m25s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=4m25s)

>Scrollbars in Interlisp-D appear on a window only when they are needed. The
user indicates this by rolling out of the content area of the window, into the
left or bottom margin. What appears is a scrollbar showing the position of the
material that is visible as a small section which is grayed out. The length of
this indicates how much is actually visible. Scrolling can be done by using
the left button for going up, and the right button for going down. You scroll
farther the farther you are away from the top of the window. In addition, the
middle button is used to thumb to the place in the whole document that you
want to see.

Xerox Development Environment and Xerox Star abandoned the idea of
disappearing scrollbars, and Xerox Star moved them to the right edge of the
window.

Here's a demo of Xerox Development Environment scrollbars from Brad Myers'
"All The Widgets" (Xerox Corporation XDE, 1981):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=5m52s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=5m52s)

Here's a demo of Xerox Star scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets"
(Xerox Corporation XDE, 1981):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=6m36s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=6m36s)

Apollo Computer's Display Manager didn't have scrollbars at all, and just let
you scroll with the keyboard.

Here's a demo of Xerox Star scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets"
(Apollo/HP Display Manager, 1981):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=7m19s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=7m19s)

Xerox PARC's Cedar document editor Tioga had invisible scrollbars on the left
edge, that became visible when you pointed at them.

Here's a demo of Xerox Star scrollbars from Brad Myers' "All The Widgets"
(Xerox PARC Cedar, 1982):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=8m21s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qtd8Hc90Hw&t=8m21s)

------
saske
Ubuntu unity scroll is the best

~~~
ape4
Screenshot?

~~~
kaslai
I can't really effectively screenshot what makes it different. The feel of
using it is a bit different than you'd expect by even watching a video. The
bar itself is only a few pixels wide and when you approach it with your
cursor, a little thumb slider pops out that you can either click and drag, or
click the embedded up/down buttons to scroll. I'm personally not a fan, but
it's an interesting design.

Here's a random picture I found on the internet [https://linuxx.info/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/0efc591e71f10...](https://linuxx.info/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/0efc591e71f101d687dd4db40eb6bb33.jpg)

