As you may remember from our series on common usability terms, I have a lot of interest in graphical user interface concepts. In addition, I applaud anyone trying to improve existing concepts, people that try to think beyond set conventions to come up with an improved version of that concept, or a new concept altogether. Thorsten Wilms took on the well-established concept of the scrollbar, and came up with a few interesting tweaks.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-03-20
In Linux, you get to enable circular scrolling on your touch pad too. It's triggered slightly differently (start your finter in hotspot of your choice) though, as right and middle clicks are done with multiple finger taps, but the basic interaction style is still there.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-17
I never got why double finger scrolling is so much better than regular using the edge of a touchpad. I have to move my entire palm to perform this gesture which makes it slower and I can't see myself using it for a prolonged time like when reading an e-book. Edge scrolling is also more intuitive, window has a scrollbar on the right (and/or down) and so does touchpad.
More on topic. I think the popup scrollbar concept is not so good mainly because I can't see a simple way to jump to a certain point in the document anymore.
Member since:2005-12-13
the whole idea behind the two finger gesture as opposed to the scroll pad to the right of your track pad is that you're not limited to a small area, which is generally what makes scroll bars somewhat unhandy, since you'll have to move the cursor to a specific area of the screen.
This is eliminated by the addition of the scroll wheel and in Apple's case the two finger gesture.
Member since:
2006-10-15
The concept isn't horrible, and I'm not sure you would be "relearning" anything -- the functionality he's replacing is almost never used as it is. I think the idea is kind of "blah" but I'm glad he's thinking of UI anyway.
I really don't want to sound like a Mac snob (I'm really not that big of a fan! I swear!), but I have to say I love the Mac Book Pro's multi-touch. I almost never use a scroll bar because of the combination of the up/down arrows on a keyboard and being able to scroll horizontally and vertically by simply using two fingers instead of one.
When I eventually have to replace my MBP and get something cheap that runs Linux, I will really miss this functionality (and I guess I kind of like the keyboard as well).