Raymond Chen, longtime Microsoft employee and author of the very popular The Old New Thing blog, published an interesting post about the Win32 scrollbar. It turns out there’s actually quite a few interesting shortcuts and useful hidden features, like clicking inside a scrollbar while holding down shift will make the content jump to that point. Halfway through the article, though, Chen laments how nobody really uses proper Win32 scrollbars anymore.
Sadly, almost nobody uses Win32 scroll bars any more. Everybody uses frameworks that provide their own custom scroll bars.
↫ Raymond Chen
And as you might expect, none of these scrollbars work like the Win32 one, making even something as basic as the scrollbar a fragmented mess. He doesn’t just blame things like Electron, either, as Microsoft’s own WinUI framework, which is used for most “new” Windows UI developed by Microsoft for Windows 11, also uses custom scrollbars that do not work like the Win32 one does.
Great, so by the time I learn about a shortcut for scroll bars (Shift+click), the ecosystem has fragmented so much that I can’t even rely on it working.
↫ Raymond Chen
Modern computing is depressing.
I can’t believe after all these years I never knew about holding shift. That should really be the default behavior.
Generally speaking nobody ever did and nobody cares. Majority of people never did or ever will use modifiers for navigating scroll bar.
My other favorite Windows Scrollbar behavior that nobody replicates (AFAIK there isn’t even an option for it in KDE!) is when dragging the scroll bar, when you move the cursor out of the scrollbar while still holding the mouse button, the location snaps back to where it was when you started dragging the slider. This is a wonderful feature to take a peek elsewhere in the document and immediately return to where you started at.
I wish this was widespread, but I think only Windows does it. And now, with so many apps just replicating the scrollbar instead of using the legitimate Windows control, it isn’t even something you can count on in Windows.
Drumhellar, I have the opposite reaction to that Windows scrollbar behavior – I hate it!
When I am trying to scroll within a document (with the intent of moving to another location within the document), and I move the mouse somewhat outside of the scrollbar itself, and the document moves back to its original location, it infuriates me.
Maybe I am just clumsy or use my mouse in a lazy or less-controlled way, but that built-in behavior has driven me nuts for decades. I would love to find a Registry setting to disable that particular behavior.
I must admit I have never thought of using that behavior as a feature. Usually if I am editing a document with a text editor, and I want to see what is in another part of the document, I’ll use a feature in the program to display two sections of the text simultaneously. But I can see how the usage you described can be useful.
Thanks for letting me vent. 🙂
I agree with the author’s take on the decline of standard user interfaces. The author stopped short of blaming microsoft…he doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds him. But microsoft went from being a genuine leader for UI standards to one of the worst enemies for standards. They ditched decades worth of UI optimizations and studies and gave the green light to utter trash. We made the sad transition from software UI standards being the norm to being the exception.
Not really. They took the UI they haven’t invented and made it default UI in Windows. They didn’t allow much customization of Windows UI and on top of that there was only one Windows. Until i guess there wasn’t only one Windows (version) any more and that already introduced some fragmentation. If lets say there would be only one GNU/Linux distribution and customizing wouldn’t be a thing, plus if majority of people would be using it and on top of that “new” version would only be released every decade, or so. It would be exactly the same thing. People would say first version, or two, when becoming really popular, where good at standards, after not so much. Reality hence is Microsoft was not really good at this, circumstances involved might have made it look like that for a while, in reality they are actually horrible at it. I guess just like the rest, AFAIK nobody is rally good at this in terms of mainstream solutions.
Geck,
While MS didn’t invent WIMP UIs, they genuinely did work to advance accessibility and standardization. Never the less I know you have a religious hatred for everything microsoft and I don’t really care if you don’t want to give them credit. MS went on to throw it all away anyway.
They didn’t actually advance standardization all that much, as that would mean not only them but projects outside of Microsoft/Windows ecosystem would adhere to such standards, that is what an actual standard does. If nobody outside Microsoft/Windows followed their standards, beyond maybe copying something and if not even Microsoft/Windows followed them, beyond a single Windows edition, then praising them for it doesn’t make any real sense. On the other hand GNU/Linux was often criticized for lack of any real standards. And yet the whole ecosystem, diverse as it is, and boy it is diverse, always managed to work side by side. Is it perfect? No. Is it worse then Windows (in between versions)? No.
Geck,
You might be too young to remember but yes that’s actually what happened. The use of standard controls was prevalent not only in microsoft software but indeed 3rd party software as well.
So at best we are talking about internal standards, or better set ultimatums, bunch of layers of it. The ones Microsoft has set for themself and others in the Windows ecosystem to follow, not really leaving them much choice then to follow, and the same ones that Microsoft and others eventually stopped adhering too and moved to something else, new layer. So this aren’t actually some real standards in terms of standardizing something in tech, like for example icon themes support in GNU/Linux, but more of saying something has good or bad “standard”. Like standard of living or similar. End even here people are now rather convinced Windows has low “standards”. I guess mostly due to people not liking what Microsoft is doing with Windows. If most people would like it, then most people would still say Windows adheres to highest “standards”.
Geck,
The standards and consistency of windows software were real. I know you are a linux fanboy and can’t stand giving MS credit for the things they did well, but to regular people it isn’t controversial.
I am a Linux fanboy as well but I would be the first one to admit that Windows 2000 has a very pleasant, efficient and consistent UI.
So choices and not standards, they made or better imposed, as they don’t allow much customization, in some Windows version, that is what you two are saying was better than choices they are making and imposing now. So they are doing the exact same thing that for example GNOME and KDE have been doing in between major versions. For example GNOME 2 vs GNOME 3. This in the end is the exact same thing. And because they leave it all inside Windows it became a fragmented layered mess. You hence don’t know what behavior you are going to get. That is exactly the same thing as what one can expect to get on GNU/Linux. But go ahead with baseless fanboy replies and ignore the facts.
@Geck:
we are not the enemy and I believe we share the same preferences. I am pretty much Linux only since before Windows 2000.
What Alfman and I tried to say is: we lost (on all OSes) a lot of consistence and usability! For example, while I prefer GTK4 (Tokyo at Night Moon!!!!!) for its aesthetics I still miss GTK2 and Gnome2 desktop for its usability — which is no wonder because they really put efforts in at that time. Usability is an Art, which you learn only when you are eating your own dog food. I don’t see this kind of effort anymore. And Scrollbars are just the perfect illustration for this sad phenomenon.
Exactly, on all platforms. Windows is not an outlier here and they didn’t do their job any better. That is all i was trying to say. They have tight control over their UI and even they managed to screw it up by introducing fragmentation and inconsistencies as the new Windows version have been produced.
No, they didn’t contribute to a formal standard, but formal standards aren’t the only type of standard.
Windows was a de facto standard, one that is widespread in use and generally agreed upon by the people that follow the standard, without being formally ratified by an independent third party. Microsoft created “The WIndows way” of doing things, built upon earlier efforts from other projects, and WIndows’ massive success is what made it a standard.
Exactly, i fully agree with that. And as said it would be exactly the same if lets say GNOME 2 was in such position back then. But the point was we shouldn’t praise them for it, as they had tight control over UI and still managed to screw it up. By introducing fragmentation and inconsistencies all over Windows, basically with each new version they released. They are hence no better then what GNU/Linux desktop environments and underlying toolkits are doing. For example having different behavior on when it comes to scroll bars and changing that in between major versions. Only die hard Windows fanboys would claim Windows is any better at this. And even such people in this day and age tend to not defend Windows for it. As they seen enough to realize Windows sucks at it too.
I don’t think anybody is really praising them for it – they’re acknowledging it as a fact, lamenting the change, and pushing back on your reflexive contrarianism.
Glad to hear now suddenly nobody is parsing them for it. Fruitful discussion.
Geck,
Re-read the original post, it was a criticism of Microsoft. Good grief.
No it wasn’t fruitful at all. I hate when people turn operating systems into religion – there’s no room for subtlety or discussion because everything gets reduced to dogma.
I said pretty much all are god-awful at this, introducing constant fragmentation and inconsistencies on when it comes to scroll bars, including Windows. It was in the end you that didn’t want to simply acknowledge that fact, you wanted some sort of exception for Windows. As you now do acknowledge it, all suck at it, that IMHO is a rather fruitful outcome. Don’t you think?
Geck,
That’s true NOW, but myself and others are pointing out that this wasn’t always the case. Windows did have good standards and UI consistency. Perhaps this was before your time, which is fine, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Moreover this has nothing to do with linux at all, which you keep bringing up because to you it’s all windows vs linux.
Of course they had good standards and consistency at the beginning, how would they not. They made something and that was it, not customizable, nothing challenging their standards and consistency set, Microsoft having total control over it. Lets say around Windows XP era and so did GNOME 2. Nobody had tight control over UI consistency in GNU/Linux but you could still mix different GNU/Linux apps and DEs together, apps written using different toolkits and achieve good and consistent results. And most importantly back then scroll bars where still a thing. After that era ended, on where all where doing rather good job at it, of course all blew it up, all introduced more and more fragmentation and inconsistencies. So, it’s true for all, back then all where achieving rather good standard of consistency, Apple too, and now it’s all one big turd on where nobody can guess up front, on what behavior of scroll bar there will be next.
Geck,
Windows was pretty much an open platform for 3rd party software. They were not coerced into using MS controls. Developers used them because it saved them time and customers saw the benefits of application consistency as well. Most of us consider it a peak era for UI consistency. At that time Microsoft did not just leave windows UI in the hands of their designers, they were actively optimizing accessibility/discoverability/useability/etc against real users. This produced real results.
I’m 100% certain that if linux had done the same thing, you’d be singing a different tune right now. The reason you want to claim it’s not creditworthy is because MS did it. This is why operating system evangelism sucks: discussions can’t have substance, all that matters is alignment. It’s just so shallow.
We already agreed that Windows copied the whole UI paradigm and didn’t invent it. So you give them way too much credit when saying on how they have had rigorously done something and tested it against real users. On where the reality was somebody else has done the majority of work for them and that is what real users really accepted. As for some decisions Microsoft made, pimping that, as the article says they are the ones that fragmented it and introduced inconsistencies, you don’t have to look at and blame 3rd party software for that, they did it too. Ultimately the downfall happened when they wanted to invent something new, when they wanted to move away from the UI they copied to something they created themself. They failed so far in every attempt at that and that is the real underlying problem here. As for GNU/Linux and as said, they did a rather good job back then and after somehow decided, to ignore the fact GNU/Linux is diverse by default. GNOME 3 folk started acting like nothing else exists, only them, then things quickly went downhill from there on. Now, for whatever reason you only want to present Windows as some sort of outlier here, when in reality they all are the exactly the same shit in this regard. Just ask the users that actually care about such things and they will tell you the same.
And don’t forget to read the article by Raymond Chen, on where he explains and complains it’s shit. Plus why did all, 3rd party and Microsoft, abandon Win32 scroll bars if it’s so great, why don’t they all simply return to it then. Problem solved.
Geck,
If you don’t want to accept computing history, fine you do you. But you should know your refusal to give them any credit for solid UIs comes across as jealously. The more you dig this hole, the more apparent it becomes. So we should probably just agree to disagree.
I have no problems with objective history, on the contrary i am glad it exists. Otherwise i am sure that Microsoft would be credited for much more then it actually should be. In terms of UI consistency and Win32 scroll bars era, the level of consistency was comparable to lets say GNOME 2 DE and an application written in GTK 2. And that was it, nothing more or less then that, that is what objective history will say. After that consistency in both went downhill. Some due to 3rd party software and some due to their own decisions.
Geck,
I loved gnome 2. It debuted in 2002 and was the first linux desktop I actually found enjoyable. Prior to it linux desktops didn’t do it for me. I appreciate good execution regardless of where it comes from. Everyone copied ideas from everyone else. I can accept that some ideas originate with MS, some with Sun, some with Apple, Xerox, etc. It doesn’t bother me at all because I don’t treat it like a god damn pissing contest. Yet for you everything is a pissing contest. Normal people aren’t like this.
Nothing wrong with an occasional pissing contest, after all most of the FOSS was built on that. As for the rest, yeah.
Geck,
Just because you can turn something into an operating system pissing contest doesn’t mean you should. As an advocate for Linux myself, I’m pretty sure such pissing contests are counterproductive for the image of FOSS and linux in the world.
Feel free to do occasional pissing contests too, when it comes to promoting GNU/Linux. Just make sure you operate with arguments and it’s not baseless. FOSS actually demands certain level of that if the ecosystem should to remain healthy.
Geck,
Windows scrollbars (and nearly all other controls) are actually extremely customizable and extendable on the app side via standard WIn32 interfaces.
Well, why don’t they, Microsoft, use it then, why did they decide to introduce something else instead. Nobody forced them to do that, to introduce fragmentation and inconsistencies. In the end they did it to themself, as the article states. Blaming others for doing the same is hence totally misplaced.
Who’s blaming others?
In the article Raymond Chen and in this discussion @Alfman for sure are putting much emphasis on 3rd party software. Then again both seem to accept the fact Microsoft moved away from Win32 scroll bars too. So i guess yes, who can really be blamed in the end, if everybody abandoned Win32 scroll bars. That supposedly was a pinnacle of consistency.
They DID allow huge customization of their UI, from color schemes to complete themes. Also, you could change fonts, move toolbars whereever you wanted, etc.
Some DEs on Linux introduced similar customization options, but it was not the same level of customization because the Linux UI alway was inconsistent. The office suit or browser (the most used apps ever) used their own toolkits that did not listen (or listened inconsistently) to the UI settings of a given DE.
And what is going on in Windows now, is, unfortunately, the process of linuxization of Windows.
You really didn’t use GNU/Linux back then did you? Claiming something in the lines of Windows XP was more customizable then lets say GNOME 2 based GNU/Linux distro. It just not the same playing field, GNU/Linux with too much advantage here to even discus it seriously.
Well, in some ways it was, because back then when you applied color/size adjustments to window elements, it applied to all applications. If you used something like WindowBlinds (or XP’s own built-in theming engine), the theming applied to nearly all applications. You had to take more steps to achieve the theming, sure, but it was universal.
That is different from Linux back in the day, when your KDE theme only applied to QT applications, GTK apps had their own themes, then you’d have to set up motif/lesstiff software to use their own theme, which also wouldn’t apply to apps that used WxWidgets, etc etc.
Sure, you could customize the hell out of Linux, but your customization would only apply to about a third of applications.
Just NO. Some of you really try hard, to push the narrative on how Windows was supposedly superior in everything, now even a shameless attempt in regards to customizing. Windows didn’t even come close to worth mentioning, compared to a full blown GNU/Linux desktop distribution, on when it came to customization. As for an analogy, Windows was in the range of statistical error. Plus back then you could still achieve good level of consistency if you mixed apps made with different toolkits.
Geck,
And that there is the jealously oozing right through. Nobody else here has made this about windows being better or worse than linux, It’s only you insisting on your OS pissing contest.
You follow such a thinly veiled script and it’s a nuisance for all have are trying to have a serious discussion.
Is it Linux? Then…
Is it microsoft? Then…
Your entire world view is predicated on who did it rather than the merits of what they did. Nobody is even able to have a rational fact based discussion with you because this has literally been the depth of your responses. The bias is so glaring it may as well be corporate shilling. FOSS is genuinely so critical to our rights and independence. The case for FOSS and linux doesn’t need or benefit from pissing contest bullshit.
I love Linux and I love GTK4 and I love LibreOffice — but whenever I open a large spreadsheet on my 32″ monitor and try to scroll, I start cursing in tongues that would make a demon blush.
Middle (scroll) mouse button to the rescue?
To be more verbose, i meant clicking with it inside scroll bar area, compared to clicking it with left mouse button.
Geck,
In libreoffice calc I find the scrollbar goes beyond the end of data (I don’t know why this is the case, IMHO should be fixed) so when the list gets long positioning with the scrollbar becomes more difficult as a single pixel change can jump past multiple screens of data. Unfortunately because it scrolls beyond the end of data, going to the end of the scrollbar (which is easy) does not correspond to the last row of data. Doh! So I end up using the keyboard instead.
That is the whole problem: the scrollbar in Calc is maybe 4 pixels wide which is less than 1 millimeter on my screen — I just can’t hit this damn thing.
Andreas Reichel,
Yes. I find that CTRL+END is a very useful shortcut for jumping to the end. Though usually I want to change the row and NOT the column, for better or worse CTRL+END changes both.
CTRL+DOWN almost does what I need: go to the last row without changing the column…except it doesn’t work if there are empty cells in the column. Grr. So I end up using CTRL+END and then finding the column again. I don’t just use these shortcuts to scroll the display, quite often I need to select the column’s data for a formula in which case SHIFT+CTRL+END works, but is tedious because I have to fix the column..
Does anyone know if there’s a shortcut to go to very end like SHIFT+CTRL+END but stay in the same column like SHIFT+CTRL+DOWN?
Unfortunately, I work with time series data and do not only jump to the end but have to look for certain ranges and rows or columns anywhere in between start and end.
Andreas Reichel,
I see your point.
I’d argue that spreadsheets are overused and aren’t always the best tool for the job. I think a lot of times a database would be more appropriate. However I also know that we often turn to spreadsheets because office suites have made them highly accessible to the masses. I can send/receive spreadsheet documents and people generally understand them whereas real databases require more setup and aren’t as accessible.
I think that in principal a proper databases with a user friendly GUI could completely replace the need for spreadsheets, but for better or worse things evolved such that spreadsheets are for the masses and databases became the domain of custom development. Even I find myself reverting back to spreadsheets over databases, because I need to interact with others.
Sir,
please trust me a bit more: We are talking about banking applications, backed by big databases. The data itself are not our problem.
What I am talking about is documentation. When you have to present your non-linear multi-variate regression analysis to the auditors, you can not just hand them a database dump. Believe it or not, for this kind of documentation in Bank and Insurances, spreadsheets are the first choice. There may be better formats and tools, but this battle is about appeasing the auditor and getting the financial reports signed — not about the technically best tool.
Best and cheers!
Andreas Reichel,
That’s too formal for my liking 🙂
Well, that’s actually what I was talking about. Very often we use a spreadsheet for data exchange even when a database is better suited for the data. The business world pressures everyone to use spreadsheets not because they’re better at holding data, but because they’re the defacto standard that the business world evolved around. There’s no technical or educational barrier that precludes the business world from having a common database format that all the office suites supported instead of excel spreadsheets. Businesses and employees might have evolved around standardized database files (ie data.db) instead of excel spreadsheets (ie data.xls) and the resulting tools/data/automation/performance/reporting/scalability would have been better than the spreadsheets we got.
It’s exactly my point that the choice of tools is not being decided by merit, but rather by the defacto standards that everyone’s using. In a hypothetical world where data.db became the standard data interchange format, banks and insurance companies would expect you to use data.db and it’s actually data.xls that would rejected.
PARQUET would be the first choice, but then you still need a viewer — and nobody knows it. Also, you will want to do basic calculations and validations on those data and highlight the results and add comments. Et Voila, you are back to Excel.
Andreas Reichel,
I don’t think you’re following my point: In a world where we standardized on exchanging database files rather than spreadsheet files, spreadsheets aren’t necessary. Or to put it a different way, businesses would still use “excel” but it would actually be a proper database program. The artificial need to convert data into and out of spreadsheets wouldn’t even come up in the first place.
Also, the “fancy” features that we’ve come to expect from excel like fonts/coloring/charts/annotations/quick formulas/scripting/etc would still exist. We would develop all the same features only they would evolve around database primitives and views instead of spreadsheets.
That is how things were back in the 80s. We used dBase for many things that are today done with Excel. You would typically use both dBase and Lotus 1-2-3, but you’d use them for different things. Of course, you weren’t really emailing files back then but you absolutely would put a dBase file on a floppy disk to share it.
As I recollect it, the move away from databases to spreadsheets was actually dictated in no small part by features / merit. People liked the fact that spreadsheets integrated data entry and storage with reporting and analysis – which, in your typical database software, were done separately. As spreadsheets got more powerful, features like the ability to recalculate formulae on the fly without having to generate reports, lists, etc. were huge points in their favour. Spreadsheets were a lot more flexible in their data types – cells are by default unstructured in terms of data types, whereas databases depended on relatively rigid schema. And there was also the issue of training costs. As spreadsheets became more capable, it was quite attractive for organisations to adopt a solution that simply let users type away into cells and use simple functions without having to master relational structures and database syntax.
TL;DR: Spreadsheets became user-friendly and capable much more quickly than databases, and as a result took over a non-trivial portion of the lower-level work from them leaving databases more or less confined to use-cases where the complexity necessitated a more powerful solution.
oskeladden,
I’m not old enough to have first hand experience with that period of computing history.
None of these features intrinsically favor spreadsheets though. Relational databases and SQL are more advanced features that one doesn’t have to learn in principal to create and use a database for office applications.
Indeed. Obviously I know that spreadsheets evolved to serve laymen and databases evolved to serve professional development and so this become the status quo. However it’s conceivable that if the early office suites offered user friendly database instead of user friendly spreadsheets, then user friendly databases could easily have become part of the status quo. I don’t think it’s far fetched, but clearly we’ve been conditioned by the status quo to assume accountants/doctors/laywers/farmers/etc can only use spreadsheets based on the way the world is today. And in today’s world I concede that databases aren’t that accessible to non-professionals, however I don’t find this to be intrinsically necessary.
Anyway, perhaps my thought experiments into alternate outcomes isn’t as interesting for others as it is for me. I’m sorry if that’s been the case. I just think the real world is full of these kinds of “local maxima” where we happen to find a stable “well” but there could be countless wells different from our own that are also stable from a local vantage point.
I understand your point, and I suspect I didn’t do a good job of explaining mine. My point is that the switch to spreadsheets happened before modern office suites emerged, when word processors, spreadsheets, and databases were largely made by separate companies. The 1992 release of dBase IV already marketed itself as being designed for programmers. FoxBASE / FoxPro marketed itself as being a lot more user-friendly, but even that relied heavily on text-based commands. Spreadsheets had moved well beyond that by that point of time. All this happened before modern office suites emerged.
Of course, modern office suites could have tried to revive a consumer market for database tools by making them more user friendly. But they would have been trying to recapture a market that had already been lost. They would have needed to convince the market to move away from spreadsheets for tasks at which spreadsheets were sufficiently competent. That would have been an uphill task requiring a lot of effort and (at least in my view), with at best a scant chance of success.
Sure, it can be good fun to speculate and I’m sorry if I came across as dismissive. The real speculation in this case, though, would be what if the 1988 release of dBase IV had recognised the challenge Lotus 1-2-3 posed to it and focused on user-friendliness, rather than just trying to differentiate itself from competing databases like FoxBASE+ by adding even more advanced and complex-to-learn features. As I see it, it was that release that sealed the fate of databases as a mass market product (although, of course, this is only evident in hindsight).
oskeladden,
Even if that’s the case, the fact that the databases were being designed for programmers whereas spreadsheets were being designed for users is exactly what I mean. It seems like we’re kind of coming at the same facts from a different angle. I’ve used fox pro, and it was used for business application development, which is fine but not really targeting the users we’re talking about.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Things are easy to change at the beginning, but become much harder to change once there’s a status quo. Once you fall into one gravity well, other gravity wells become harder to reach even if they’re hypothetically larger.
Well that’s the interesting part. The exact same case could have been made in the opposite direction had user friendly databases came first.
I see, width of the sidebars in LibreOffice is a problem for you, too small scroll bar. I don’t know what DE you are using but based on the data you provided, that you love GTK4 and LibreOffice i will assume you use default GTK3, or experimental GTK4 visual class library. Either way this is what you can do, open your .config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css or .config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css and add into it this line: scrollbar button, scrollbar slider { min-width: 24px; min-height: 24px; } then save the changes. Start LibreOffice and if no changes are applied then start it again from terminal by issuing command SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3 libreoffice or SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4 libreoffice and note that you should have packages libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-gtk4 installed if you want to test both VCLs.
Thank you much Geck,
I finally created a new file [i]~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css[\i] with
[code]
/* traditional arrow steppers */
scrollbar {
-GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true;
-GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true;
-GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-forward-stepper: false;
-GtkScrollbar-has-secondary-backward-stepper: false;
}
/* width of track + slider */
scrollbar.vertical slider { min-width: 16px; }
scrollbar.horizontal slider { min-height: 16px; }
scrollbar slider { margin: 1px; border-radius: 3px; }
/* stepper buttons sized to match */
scrollbar.vertical button { min-width: 16px; min-height: 16px; }
scrollbar.horizontal button { min-width: 16px; min-height: 16px; }
/* stop themes from shrinking the slider to a hairline while idle */
scrollbar.overlay-indicator:not(.dragging):not(.hovering) slider {
min-width: 16px; min-height: 16px; margin: 1px;
}
[\code]
This solved my problem beautifully. Thanks again.
Good to hear that.
Please confirm this: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167425
If you have issues with Skia on your hardware you can’t do much about it then to disable it. Just make sure you downloaded and installed latest LibreOffice version, as some previous versions released this year, on Windows and macOS, had it set mandatory and you couldn’t disable Skia with the checkbox in preferences. Due to many reported issues the option to disable Skia was re-enabled.
While some of us preferred the elegance of NeXTSTEP, Microsoft and Intel established a commercial monopoly (the Wintel duopoly) that effectively eliminated choice for both users and developers. Microsoft Windows didn’t win because it had great GUI controls; it dominated because it brought a “good enough” modern GUI to the cheap commodity hardware people already owned. For software developers, the dominance of Windows 95 meant that ignoring the platform was commercial suicide. Microsoft turned this market share into absolute compliance through the Win32 API. Compliance and developer lock-in were at play.
tomchr,
I totally agree with you on the MS monopoly side of things. And their monopoly tactics likely played a far bigger roles in microsoft’s dominance than anything to do with GUIs. However that doesn’t mean their employees didn’t do good work optimizing GUIs, these can both be true at the same time.
I’m not sure what to make of this. MS did plenty to lock in web and office users, and embrace, extend, extinguish java, etc, all of which I find morally wrong. But I don’t see how you make the case that win32 was some kind of forced compliance? Is there anything specifically critical about win32s or merely that developers were “forced” into it because windows was popular? I guess you could say that but IMHO it’s not a very strong case if popularity is the main objection. Don’t get me wrong, I think MS were devious as hell when it came to monopoly abuse. I’m just not clear what you mean.
This is not a Windows problem but an App Store one, but still modern computing is sad. I just learned there was a Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks game released 12 years ago and on many platforms it would be still playable…. not on Android/iOS….. the website is still here and advertising a game which is dead, gone, ex-apped. And there’s nothing we can do about it really.
steveftoth,
Never heard of this game. I didn’t know that Monty Python ever made things like that. I did see the Monty Pyton Spamalot play!
I do find myself increasingly frustrated at the android app situation. I have a lot of hardware that, whether I like it or not, is reliant on an android/ios app and the hardware continues to work well past the point when the manufacturer stops supporting it. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could keep using the APK forever, but I’m finding that not all APKs carry forward to new phones, leaving me at a technological impasse. This was the case with my security cameras. They originally came with a version of iVMS where everything worked (and still works on my old phone). But my new phone will not run the same APK. My new phone will run a newer version of iVMS, but the newer version dropped support for my cameras. I’ve lost remote control pan-tilt-zoom-record-etc functionality. which frankly is why I bought the cameras in the first place.
I’ve found myself increasingly vulnerable to this scenario and I hate it. I’ve tried my best to navigate away from these traps but tons of hardware ends up having features designed to integrate exclusively with IOS/Android apps these days. My solar chargers and batteries need an app, An osiliscopes and multi-meters too. Our camping lights too. All of these will become unsupported and when they do I’m afraid I don’t have the source code to do anything about it.
I diligently look for FOSS alternatives, which is the only real long term fix for this problem, but by and large companies only want to sell proprietary junk that will eventually leave us stranded. Grr.
I personnaly think that the web and web apps killed not only the scrollbar, but UI in general. There is no more such thing as cohérent UI. Anything can be clickable, scrollbars have no rules: shown in one app, popping left to the limit of the app elsewhere, popping right (sometimes on another screen) sometimes. Drag to go to précisé location, just click or shift click. Click once on the bar to scroll freely. On my debian, the terminal under cinammon seem ti have NO WAY to scroll only ne page – hyper frustrating when you need to scroll a big history.
Uses dont give a shit: for them, there are no rules in software and they don’t expect any soon. For power user, seeing basic features disappearing because thé software has been rewritten to add transparency is a real shame