Comments on: Patch For Scrollbars Without Arrow Buttons

By: Remi Villatel

Remi Villatel — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 20:36:33 +0000

Your post appeared today on KDE Planet RSS –with a tenth of other posts. Any way, I found it very interesting when I realized that I never use the scrollbar arrow buttons either. I won’t apply your patch but I will add a new arrowless scrollbar type to my style. I definitively think this kind of “bar tuning” is a job for the styles.

Thanks for the patch; it tells me exactly what I need to take care of.

By: Ryan Nickell

Ryan Nickell — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 02:52:51 +0000

I like the patch myself when using the desktop machine b/c I rely on the wheel button quite a bit. However, on a laptop with a , it becomes a burden since there’s no wheel mouse available. An updated patch where this behavior could be toggled in kcontrol would be optimal and I’m sure could be pushed into 3.5.3.

Here’s to hoping, but thanks for the patch!

cheers

By: Benjamin Kudria

Benjamin Kudria — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:51:56 +0000

Intelligent? Ha! I’ve been fighting with KDE (or X, I’m not sure which) to get my scroll wheel to work somewhere other than a scrollbar. It has maybe got to be the most annoying thing in the world. Any help appreciated:

By: Max Howell

Max Howell — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:01:48 +0000

I like the idea of putting the buttons in the scrollbar itself. I may try to make a patch for it.

And it’s worth noting this won’t become a KDE default or anything, I’m just a KDE application developer, I have no kudos with kdebase or kdelibs.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:44:42 +0000

I think scrollbars should be keeped:

1. As some already pointed the give you a visual clue of what’s an scrollbar.
2. People are used to see those arrows…
3. The most important reason perhaps is that people without mouse wheel tend to push those buttons because pressing the bar itself means that you’ll need to move your mouse again when the bar reaches your cursor. If you press the buttons instead the bar will move all the way up or down without moving your mouse.
4. If you hate wasting screen space… why did you use a HUGE font for your window title bar ?!?! just kidding

SnOp

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:13:17 +0000

I like this idea very much. As you said, I also never use these arrow buttons, which I just realised now.
To make the scrollbar more recognisable, maybe you could put two little arrows on the edges of the scrollbar, indicating possible movement (no buttons, just visual indicators). If the scrollbar is at the top (or bottom), the indicating arrow could be greyed out.
Just a small suggestion, thank you very much for this excellent idea, which I hope will find its way into one of the next releases.

-Tom

By: Duncan Hill

Duncan Hill — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:32:09 +0000

The only problem I could see with this patch is for those people who don’t have mouse wheels - like my laptop. Sure, I can click the bar, but the arrows are useful, and as you say, they provide the visual cue that the bar is a scroll bar.

By: hachaboob

hachaboob — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:27:36 +0000

Could you make it have arrows on the ends of the scrollbar itself?

By: Eduardo Robles Elvira

Eduardo Robles Elvira — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 06:02:05 +0000

Hello!

I also think that those arrow buttons are one of the most unsed things occupying space in my desktop, though they might prove useful for beguinners.

I think that a better thought certainly more complicated approach to it would be to blend them with the rest of the scrollar in some way. I’m thinking about keeping the arrows being shown but not the button border around them, only show it on mouse over and let the main moving thing of the toolbar be moved to that space. So that you can still tell that it’s actually a scrollbar because of the arrows, you can use it, but it doesn’t waste space at all

By: Ryan James

Ryan James — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:43:11 +0000

Why notmake the arrows part of the scrollbar?