squircular reasoning

@spiders

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squircular reasoning @spiders10/12/2022, 4:58 PM

squircular reasoning @spiders

squircular reasoning @spiders9/28/2022, 8:01 PM

a psa to ui developers about scrollbars:

PLEASE stop doing this thing where you hide the scroll bar when it's not being used, or make it invisible, or super thin and difficult to see. this post explains why. as an example of this...

squircular reasoning @spiders10/12/2022, 4:58 PM

how we managed to disable this bullshit on our computer

to disable it on websites (firefox)

download custom scrollbars by wesley branton and adjust the settings to your liking.

to disable it in the operating system (on linux)

every gtk app does this stupid ableist nonsense. gtk refers to it as "overlay scrollbars", it's been the default ever since the "ruin every gui with 'minimalism' and 'flat design'" craze of the 2010's, and it's very difficult to turn it off.

if you are very lucky, your desktop environment might provide some kind of way to disable it, probably buried deep in some settings menu, but i was not so lucky and the way i made my computer usable was by

editing /etc/environmentas root
adding the following on its own line: GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0

thank you to this linux mint forum thread for providing this solution

#accessibility

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in reply to @spiders's post:

squircular reasoning @spiders9/28/2022, 8:07 PM

if you put developers in charge of a city they would be like "it's long since time that we removed these ugly and unsightly tactile pavers on our curb cuts, to better pursue the minimalist aesthetic which is the future of good design. and we should stop having walk signals announce out loud when it's safe to walk- good design should speak for itself!"

cassandra rose @cass9/28/2022, 8:33 PM

to be honest with you i would not be surprised if there are city planners/designers who are frustrated by those things. as a fan of city planning most city planners are the worst

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/29/2022, 7:18 PM

you almost certainly already have tried, but if you middle click a non-link in a page that scrolls, at least on windows and Linux scroll will follow the mouse, and might enable easier bindings than the scrollbar even if i think the scrollbar also shouldn't be hidden

squircular reasoning @spiders9/29/2022, 7:23 PM

this doesn't really work for me because it scrolls very fast and can be ~~erotic~~ erratic with eye tracking

talon has a similar mode where the scroll follows your gaze at a much more reasonable pace, which we also sometimes use, but it's situational and a lot of the time just clicking the scroll bar is better because its less vocal strain

edit: correction of extremely funny dictographic error

Nire Bryce @NireBryce9/29/2022, 7:25 PM

oh i see, I thought you were describing clicking and holding the handle, not the empty "track", got it

squircular reasoning @spiders9/29/2022, 7:26 PM

oh no yeah dragging with eye tracking is a nightmare and we avoid doing it like the plague

squircular reasoning @spiders10/12/2022, 5:09 PM

https://cohost.org/spiders/post/133355-how-we-managed-to-di

an update on how we managed to disable it on our computer (firefox and linux)

in reply to @spiders's post:

Daniel Gibson @danielg10/13/2022, 12:12 AM

This is such a stupid trend - and it's so utterly pointless :-/

I mean, maybe this kinda thing makes sense (in some way) on narrow smartphone displays or whatever.
But on desktop platforms (including laptops), where widescreen displays have been the standard for years, there really is no point in trying to gain a little horizontal space by making scrollbars disappear.

I wish Mozilla and Gtk developers (and Microsoft) would finally get off this horrible flat and low-contrast UI trend.
(Another pet peeve of mine: Title bars of windows where you can hardly tell which window is the active one, because instead of using a noticeable color for the title bar of the focused window vs and grey for the other ones, modern desktops tend to use the same color for all and then change the text color a little bit from greyish to black or whatever..)

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