
Google Wave's Scrollbars - blasdel
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IgnoreTheCode+%28ignore+the+code%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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bumblebird
There's nothing worse than non native scrollbars lagging, not doing as you
expect them to.

Flash scrollbars, these 'infinite ajax scrollbars', and this google scrollbar
all fail miserably IMHO.

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NathanKP
I agree. The first time I saw the Google wave scrollbar I thought that it was
a visual glitch because it looked like the scrollbar had somehow floated
outside the frame.

And the most disturbing thing in my opinion is that using my mouse's scroll
wheel is very laggy, especially on longer waves. I would much rather they let
the browser handle scrolling and scroll bars naturally. It would be much more
efficient.

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techiferous
I really appreciate Google's attempt to revisit some of the basic UI
interactions that we often take for granted. Scrollbar behavior has stabilized
and works well for most situations, but this doesn't mean it can't be
improved.

However, this new scrollbar approach seems complex and Rube Goldbergesque. For
a new UI control to disrupt a firmly entrenched UI control, it's got to scream
simplicity, elegance, and why-didn't-I-think-of-that obviousness. And the very
best UI controls are the ones that you never notice.

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nickpp
Two major reasons Google added this new scrollbar:

1\. Stop "jumping document width madness". With the OS scrollbar (on windows
at least) the document would shrink with the scrollbar width when its length
starts requiring a scrollbar.

Collapsing/Expanding a thread which makes the document shorter/longer than its
view space will thus shift all centered designs right/left.

2\. Does not take space. The scrollbar is drawn NO TOP of page elements. It
does not occupy its own dedicated space.

Even worse were always-present scrollbars even when having nothing to scroll)
as misguided attempts to solve problem 1.

I for one like this solution.

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m_eiman
_Even worse were always-present scrollbars even when having nothing to scroll)
as misguided attempts to solve problem 1._

What's misguided about that? It's consistent and easy to understand.

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nickpp
The scrollbars are ALWAS there. Even when not needed. Taking up valuable
screen real estate. Just for the eventuality that they will be necessary. In
the future.

Maybe not misguided, but not an ideal solution either. Google's seems better.

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sonoffett
one possible solution is the one Mozilla Bespin went with where there's a
hovering translucent scroll bar which varies in opacity depending on whether
you're hovered over it.

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elblanco
MADNESS!!!! A context sensitive UI element that only appears when you want it
to and doesn't clutter up the visual space when you don't need it? INSANITY!!!

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dpcan
I just noticed, without thinking about it, while reading through these
comments, I was holding onto the scroll bar, moving the page up and down as
needed to read everything. My hand and mind were in perfect sync, I was able
to read and scroll seamlessly.

When using Google Wave, I feel like I'm actually BATTLING with the browser to
find information. The scroll bar in Google Wave is a flaw in my opinion. A
seriously poor design decision.

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cabalamat
Yes, exactly! The normal scrollbars work well because we've all got used to
them. Google's new one doesn't.

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kmod
Random speculation: Google put this feature in Wave to get some early feedback
before including it as the default scrollbar behavior in Chrome OS.

I will most likely be verifiably wrong about this soon, but it would make
sense given Google's strategy of testing things out in small batches before
making it default. Why the comment about "mobile devices and netbooks"? Why
Wave? They could just as well put these scrollbars in Gmail or any other
Google product. It doesn't make sense to me, except if they want people to try
it out and work out the kinks before putting it in Chrome OS where 1) the
primary target is "mobile devices and netbooks" and 2) they can much more
easily make that the default scrollbar behavior.

~~~
bhousel
It's a nice idea, but I kind of doubt we'll see these scroll bars anywhere
else. Google's UIs are extremely inconsistent across all of their apps..

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tr4nslator
Actually, I'm pretty sure this is another version of the Picasa scrollbar,
which has been around for a few years:

[http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090102/PIcasaMac-
main_610x449.p...](http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090102/PIcasaMac-
main_610x449.png)

~~~
mcav
I've never liked the Picasa scrollbar either. Hard to tell how long the
document is.

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grinich
_I live in a small cottage in a remote part of the Swiss Alps, and you can
reach me at LKM@lkmc.ch or on twitter._

This is why I love the internet.

~~~
LukasMathis
Imagine how much you'll love the Internet when you're living in a small
cottage in a remote part of the Swiss Alps :-)

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ugh
Oh, come on. We are talking here about densly populated Switzerland in the
middle of densly populated Europe. There is no such thing as remoteness there
:-)

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LukasMathis
I guess that depends on your definition of the word "remote". By American
standards, Switzerland would be too small to have remote areas anyway since
you can pretty much cross the whole country in a few hours ☺

But there are, in fact, areas which are only sparsely populated.

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BerislavLopac
The concluding sentence of this article precisely describes my complete
experience with Google Wave: "without knowing exactly what problem the people
at Google were trying to solve with their scrollbar, it’s impossible to say
whether this change would work for them"

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zb
It's nice to see a design critique where the author actually acknowledges that
it's ultimately impossible to judge the success of a design without knowing
the context in which it was created.

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BerislavLopac
True, even though it hasn't prevented him from suggesting his solution. But my
point was that it is still unknown -- I would dare guess even to its creators
-- what problem is Google Wave supposed to solve.

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markkanof
I haven't had the opportunity to use the Google Wave scrollbars, but it seems
that one advantage would be a consistent and reasonable sized target to click
in order to scroll.

I've always found it quite difficult to scroll really large documents with the
standard type of scrollbars. The click target is ridiculously small and so is
hard to hit with the mouse, and then the scroll is very sensitive, so it's
easy to skip over too much too quickly.

~~~
jacobolus
If your mouse has a proper acceleration curve (as, for instance OS X does, or
Linux can be made to), then moving the mouse slowly → small movements, and
tiny targets and small movements are pretty easy to manage.

~~~
elblanco
The plethora of apps designed specifically to fix OS X's obviously horribly
broken and unusable acceleration curve is the only counter the universe needs
against your argument.

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ashishbharthi
If they are really trying to save screen real estate by shrinking the width of
scrollbars, they have wasted lots of it between the empty spaces between the
windows.

~~~
nickpp
That space is already there for aesthetic reasons (visual separation of
content, etc.).

You'll notice that the scrollgadget is overlayed ON TOP of the that separation
space/margins. Very visible when switching beteen a very short (non-scoll)
wave and a long, paginated one.

Genius!

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sshconnection
Everyone seems to be overlooking something that was actually mentioned in the
article and I think seems like a pretty obvious reason: extensibility. In a
wave, people are constantly updating things all over the place. The ability to
show when and where on the wave updates are taking place would, IMO, clearly
be a useful feature worthy of implementing a custom scroll bar.

~~~
PebblesRox
True, but that doesn't mean that they need to make the basic scroll features
behave in a new way.

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simonista
Wow, I had never noticed that shadow thumb until this article pointed it out.
I had to go back play with it. A couple other random observations: when you
click on one of the arrows the real thumb doesn't snap up to the shadow thumb
until you've moved the cursor a certain distance away. Also, scrolling by
clicking and dragging the thumb has the lag effect mentioned in the article,
but scrolling with two fingers on my trackpad doesn't.

I think the other problem that isn't mentioned in the article is that, at
least for long waves, loading of content seems to make scrolling jerky and
unpredictable.

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makmanalp
They could have (maybe?) used better visual cues to make it obvious that it
was a velocity control rather than a displacement. Other than that, I think
the netbook argument makes a ton of sense. Even on my fullsized screen, I hate
scrolling down really long pages. I also think that it's silly that if you
have a really long page the scroll "sensitivity" will be much higher in a
traditional scrollbar. I use the mousepad scroller more often for that reason.

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lispm
The scrollbars are a bit like the old OPEN LOOK scrollbars from SUN from 1988.

[http://www.guidebookgallery.org/ads/magazines/openlook/deadl...](http://www.guidebookgallery.org/ads/magazines/openlook/deadlineextender/pics/02)

The scrollbar had the up and down buttons near the scroll thumb. Clicking on
them also moved the mouse cursor with the button. This requires an X11 server
where the mouse cursor can be moved programmatically ('warped').

~~~
zandorg
Yes, now you mention it, the Suns at my University worked that way.

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icefox
One of the reasons listed is that in the future they could add other
indicators, but the native scrollbars can already do this. For example in
XCode when you compile your code I believe little red lines will appear in
your scrollbar at the lines that have compiler errors.

~~~
discbox
Google actually already does this with Chrome using native scrollbars:

[http://www.techdreams.org/browsers/brilliant-google-
chrome-u...](http://www.techdreams.org/browsers/brilliant-google-chrome-ui-
highlights-search-text-occurrences-on-scroll-bar/379-20080928)

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araneae
I personally really hate the scrollbar, mostly because waves can be really
long and I like the feature of a normal scrollbar in that it represents the
length of the scrollable material.

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ideamonk
The scrollbars of Wave remind me of this demo I was months back -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnXY4wjuH8>

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zandorg
Well thank goodness someone agrees with me. I just hope the Googlers reading
this get the idea. And as someone said, a mousewheel is the solution -
hopefully temporarily.

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elblanco
There are lots of things to like about Wave and lots of things to dislike. The
scrollbars are by far at the very tippy top of the "loath" list.

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iambvk
I think time has come that scrollbars should be obsolete.

Who is not using mouse with scroll button here?

~~~
kiiski
I still like having the scrollbar to show how far from the bottom of the
document I am.

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ramen
So this is a feature? I thought it was just broken in Linux.

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alexkay
I don't remember the last time I used a vertical scroll bar - for me it's
always the mouse wheel (on the desktop) or the right edge of the touchpad (on
the laptop).

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dpcan
I think the default for most mouse wheels is about 3 lines of vertical
movement at a time.

When you need to jump down 3 pages to the comments, or to a deeper page in a
document, most people don't wheel down 3 lines at a time, they grab the scroll
bar and zip to the bottom of the page.

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10ren
I use the mouse wheel, and for jumping further down, I hit the space bar, or
worst case, the "End" key.

