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 Post subject: Scrollbars / Use of Mouse wheel (Split from "What does your os..
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 3:23 am 
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klange wrote:
I have built a new package manager and package format for my OS. Previously, I had a "package" system consisting of a large manifest of instructions on how to download some files and install them, with operations that included mounting tmpfses, symlinking files, decompressing and mounting ext2 images - it was a mess that was only really meant to automate some things I was already doing to test ported software. Now I've spent a bunch of time ensuring my live CDs have a proper read-write root filesystem (through an in-memory tmpfs initialized at boot with the real filesystem contents), designed a package file format (a specially-crafted gzipped tarball, which is similar to how formats like Deb work) and redesigned my package manager UI. I ported all of my old packages to the new format, and even built a website to browse available packages.

Image

(For reference, the old package manager UI looked like this)


Is it just me or is the window you have open missing a scroll bar? Above the Lua package there seems to be some other package which isn't fully visible so I assume that the "page" being shown in the window has been scrolled..

If you've intentionally not having scroll bars, then what do you use to replace them? Curious if you've got some other design choice..


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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 4:11 am 
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LtG wrote:
Is it just me or is the window you have open missing a scroll bar? Above the Lua package there seems to be some other package which isn't fully visible so I assume that the "page" being shown in the window has been scrolled..

If you've intentionally not having scroll bars, then what do you use to replace them? Curious if you've got some other design choice..

(please don't quote large images)

Originally, I had intended to implement traditional scrollbars, but after some thought and experimentation, I ended up not doing it. Personally, I never use them, and with scroll wheel and page up / page down, the interactions are available in more natural ways. I've also considered drag-to-scroll as on mobile interfaces but haven't implemented it.

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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 7:53 am 
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klange wrote:
LtG wrote:
Is it just me or is the window you have open missing a scroll bar? Above the Lua package there seems to be some other package which isn't fully visible so I assume that the "page" being shown in the window has been scrolled..

If you've intentionally not having scroll bars, then what do you use to replace them? Curious if you've got some other design choice..

(please don't quote large images)

Originally, I had intended to implement traditional scrollbars, but after some thought and experimentation, I ended up not doing it. Personally, I never use them, and with scroll wheel and page up / page down, the interactions are available in more natural ways. I've also considered drag-to-scroll as on mobile interfaces but haven't implemented it.

I quoted the large picture intentionally to preserve what I was referring to, of course if the original picture disappears it won't really help though.. For instance reading some of the old threads you'll notice that berkus's posts are missing and when people answer to them it's difficult to follow, unless they've quoted which preserves the context..

I never "use" the scroll bars either, I use the keyboard or the scroll wheel of the mouse, however I do like knowing/seeing how long something is and where I'm currently located within it. You don't miss that?

For instance some very long web page, if I instantly see it's very long I may save it and come back to reading it at a later time if I'm pressed for time.. I don't have any experience of not having the scroll bars so I don't know how much it would bother or annoy me.. For you it hasn't been an issue?

This is one of the very few differences I've seen on this board, so I'm curious if there's some actual value here. I'd like to see more "oddities" and letting go of the past, but as I'm sure we all know it's difficult to think outside of the box in a useful way.


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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:30 am 
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klange wrote:
Originally, I had intended to implement traditional scrollbars, but after some thought and experimentation, I ended up not doing it. Personally, I never use them, and with scroll wheel and page up / page down, the interactions are available in more natural ways. I've also considered drag-to-scroll as on mobile interfaces but haven't implemented it.

I've lost track of how often I've had the scroll wheel break ._. (it seems to be the lowest quality part in mouses these days) Not to mention I've run into laptops where the scroll wheel isn't simulated by the trackpad, or where it is but it's so inconvenient that you may as well ignore that it exists. Also the scroll wheel is awful when you have to scroll a lot (bound to happen when the list gets too long), you need to spin it many times as opposed to just holding down the button with a scrollbar.

Also sometimes I happen to have my hand on the mouse but not the other hand on the keyboard, being forced to suddenly use the keyboard when the mouse could have done the job is annoying =P (same goes the other way, I've seen way too many programs that aren't usable without a mouse, which must be "fun" for people with mobility issues)

EDIT: essentially tl;dr people use computers in different ways (not necessarily better or worse), so it's a good thing to account for that.

LtG wrote:
I quoted the large picture intentionally to preserve what I was referring to, of course if the original picture disappears it won't really help though.. For instance reading some of the old threads you'll notice that berkus's posts are missing and when people answer to them it's difficult to follow, unless they've quoted which preserves the context..

You can just leave in the link (i.e. remove the [img] tags)


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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:02 am 
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Sik wrote:
Also sometimes I happen to have my hand on the mouse but not the other hand on the keyboard

Ah yes, many people do this on a weekly or even daily basis :lol:


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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:53 am 
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Sik wrote:
I've lost track of how often I've had the scroll wheel break ._. (it seems to be the lowest quality part in mouses these days) Not to mention I've run into laptops where the scroll wheel isn't simulated by the trackpad, or where it is but it's so inconvenient that you may as well ignore that it exists. Also the scroll wheel is awful when you have to scroll a lot (bound to happen when the list gets too long), you need to spin it many times as opposed to just holding down the button with a scrollbar.

Interesting, I've never had the wheel break of probably close to 15 mice, left button (Logitech) at least 3 times. As for "spinning", luckily many (most?) Logitech mice have the option of clicking the scroll wheel to spin freely instead of in increments, fast for scrolling.

Sik wrote:
Also sometimes I happen to have my hand on the mouse but not the other hand on the keyboard, being forced to suddenly use the keyboard when the mouse could have done the job is annoying =P (same goes the other way, I've seen way too many programs that aren't usable without a mouse, which must be "fun" for people with mobility issues)

Couldn't agree more, almost half of my computer use is without a pointing device. Luckily MS is decent at it, once you learn all the relevant tricks you can do most stuff on Windows from keyboard only in a reasonable way.

For instance, when you want to follow links in Firefox you can use the search (ctrl-f) to find something that's close to what you want and that moves the invisible cursor, then the tab key starts from there, so you can quickly get to the link. This is also a good reason why web pages shouldn't use custom _picture_ buttons, you can't search for them.

Anyone who wants to design their OS to be _usable_ should probably spend half their time using their OS (and dev tools) with keyboard only. Maybe also a part of the time with mouse only.

Sik wrote:
LtG wrote:
I quoted the large picture intentionally to preserve what I was referring to, of course if the original picture disappears it won't really help though.. For instance reading some of the old threads you'll notice that berkus's posts are missing and when people answer to them it's difficult to follow, unless they've quoted which preserves the context..

You can just leave in the link (i.e. remove the [img] tags)

True, but especially if the post happens to be on a different page (didn't check), then it's still not as good. Honestly, the "correct" thing is to keep context, and in this case it was to quote.

I'm not a fan of too big pictures that cause the "pagination" in browsers not to function in a desirable way, but I still think that maintaining context is the correct solution and the problem should be "fixed" on the BBS side. For instance the BBS should scale the image and allow full sized image to be presented by clicking the image, etc.. Of course I'd also prefer if the image was actually hosted by the BBS so they would stand the test of time, but that would possibly create legal issues..



edit.
PS. I also bought one of IBM's keyboards just because it has the "pointing stick", not sure why nobody else wants to produce those. It's very convenient when you're mostly keyboard bound and need the mouse for something quickly but temporarily. It takes some getting used to, but once you do it's at least 10x better than any crappy track pad.


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 Post subject: Re: What does your OS look like? (Screen Shots..)
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:55 pm 
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Quote:
edit.
PS. I also bought one of IBM's keyboards just because it has the "pointing stick", not sure why nobody else wants to produce those. It's very convenient when you're mostly keyboard bound and need the mouse for something quickly but temporarily. It takes some getting used to, but once you do it's at least 10x better than any crappy track pad.

Agreed. I also got the USB ThinkPad keyboard to use at work, because I can point, click, scroll and type without ever taking my hands off of the keyboard.

Unfortunately, IBM seems to be the only company that has gotten the user interface on these sticks just right.

Every other one that I've tried is almost unusable.

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 Post subject: Re: Scrollbars / Use of Mouse wheel (Split from "What does y
PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:34 pm 
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My request was actually taken into account! Thank you moderators.

Just wanna keep the topics clean and on point.

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