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To me overlay scrollbars are a usability nightmare, as a scrollbar gives an immediate information about the size of the page and where you are at the page.

Overlay scrollbars ain't such bad. But if the scrollbar gets hidden, then it is.
Just check from my top post a first mockup. It has overlay scrollbar but the difference to normal is just that it does not have a background.

But IF we are going to implement something what now Unity has..... it is terrible. Chasing a scrollbar and so on... that is usability nightmare.

The overlay scrollbar does not mean scrollbar wouldn't be visible all the time and same size as now typical one. But just that there ain't background and material goes "under it".

Fri13 wrote:

To me overlay scrollbars are a usability nightmare, as a scrollbar gives an immediate information about the size of the page and where you are at the page.

Overlay scrollbars ain't such bad. But if the scrollbar gets hidden, then it is.
Just check from my top post a first mockup. It has overlay scrollbar but the difference to normal is just that it does not have a background.

But IF we are going to implement something what now Unity has..... it is terrible. Chasing a scrollbar and so on... that is usability nightmare.

The overlay scrollbar does not mean scrollbar wouldn't be visible all the time and same size as now typical one. But just that there ain't background and material goes "under it".

Well that may look pretty, however up/down buttons are useful for pages that are too long. Using a touchpad, it is too hard to adjust the grabbing, even a little push can get too much and readjusting is hard too. (Multitouch does not work on some touchpads, for example for my sentelic fingersense pad). Up/down buttons may be included too, but that would make it look ugly.

Well, the scrollbar up/down buttons can be added but with same manner as they are now configurable. Up and down, only up or down or none. They would not be integrated to scrollbar itself but located top or bottom.

But more important is that people should learn to use those keyboards. We do have page up/down buttons. Usually on laptops very easily usable. And desktop keyboards easy to use.

Web browsers allows people to go up and down with space / shift+space.
And mouse wheel is much faster than using a scroll bar.

But with overlay scrollbar we always loose the possibility to jump the location where user clicks the scrollbar.
Some desktops allows it to be one page up/down when clicking empty area and some allows it to be jump to that position.
But with hover scrollbar, it is impossible as there ain't background.

After all, is the scroll bars really broken and should we "fix" them?

Look at gnome idea https://live.gnome.org/ChristianHergert/Gnome3DX

The GNOME idea is clever but I do not like it at all. As it does not look good and is very hard to use by dragging. Even that it fix the text covering problem being partially invisible, it does not feel good.

Fri13, did you try opera scrollbar extension ?
https://addons.opera.com/en/addons/exte ... bar/0.8-5/
I think that would be ideal for KDE.

Thanks for the link. I have had Opera installed all the time but I use other browsers so I dont so much search extensions for it.

I tried that extension and I didn't like how it looks and how it works when hovered (grown bigger).
It just feel a hack and it is hard to get touch for draggin.
It even grow stronger opinion against overlay scrollbar.

Fri13 wrote:Yes, but Canonical did again something what is not good for usability.

Why? I intalled Ubuntu yesterday the first time. Just for testing. I don't see the negative side. You have thin a scrollbars which don't disturb the visual impact (have you ever opened kontact suite on a 8 inch netbook with a resolution of 1024x600). The length of the scrollbar is variable to to height of the content. You can easly grap the slider, which only appear if are over the scrollbar. An who needs it can just click on the arrow up and down.

Pernonally I like the OS X way. But the Ubuntu way would implement all needs which are formulated in this thread.

To see Ubuntus scrollbar in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7R1Ms3LSEI
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRkv1jmoOY

I think that the Ubuntu's overlay scrollbar are their best usability work so far. Is a lot better than the macOS Lion scroll bar.

I will not vote it down because generally I think users should have options to satisfy their preferences. I don't see the point of voting down. If I don't like something I just don't use it.
But I don't like Overlay Scrollbars because it it is hidden user first must locate it before clicking on it, so it makes things more difficult. In my experience they don't provide any edge over traditional scrollbars, neither save space.
I think if this idea gets to development there should be option to switch it off.
There are good theme engines like Bespin that let users to define width and length of scrollbars.

apache wrote:I will not vote it down because generally I think users should have options to satisfy their preferences. I don't see the point of voting down. If I don't like something I just don't use it.
But I don't like Overlay Scrollbars because it it is hidden user first must locate it before clicking on it, so it makes things more difficult. In my experience they don't provide any edge over traditional scrollbars, neither save space.
I think if this idea gets to development there should be option to switch it off.
There are good theme engines like Bespin that let users to define width and length of scrollbars.

Obviously you haven't use it. There's a line indicating your possition view from the app. If you want to scroll, then just hover your pointer near the window border, then your scroll control will appear just where your pointer is. Even It has up and down buttons that you can use for tiny movements in a large document.

Is a great visual and usability idea that should be suported in QT

ngativ wrote:Obviously you haven't use it.

Actually I did when I tested Unity. For the whole one minute until I got rid of it. After 10 minutes I couldn't stand Unity.
But if you like them I wish developers will do it for you, as an option.

Probably it will have to be a kind of default theme engine enhancement anyway, not the whole KDE.

Yes, please. I really like these overlay scrollbars.
One thing - it needs to be thin. It's only there to give feedback to scrolling, not to be interactive, so it's rational to make it hide as little content as possible. And an abstract look would probably fit it better than a 3d look. It should look like a thin bright line, to make it visually different from the normal scrollbar and to make it more visible.
It should be optional, of course. The option could be in the Oxygen style settings, because that's probably where it would be implemented.