When we introduced the new overlay scrollbars we knew it was a bold decision and we were expecting some critics because of the use cases we didn’t support.
As hoped, we had a lot of very useful feedback. Most of the people very liked this innovation and understood our need to be consistent to our design principles. But because we were hoping for the minimal impact, it was important for us to understand when this wasn’t the case.
Since then we kept working on the scrollbars to implement some of the other things we had initially in mind and also to resolve, when possible, the issues raised. We are pretty happy with some of the solutions, for instance the Fitts’s law optimization for maximized windows, but we still have indeed work to do.
The most common features which we couldn’t cover yet are:
- instant scroll through middle click
- reveal the thumb when coming from outside the window
As you can easily imagine, these features are quite challenging by the nature of the current design and, in general, we would like to think any new feature through. We want to make clear that we value your feedback and these requests are far from being forgotten.
Now the juicy bits, other features we are introducing are:
- support for right-to-left languages
- various tweaks on delays before hiding the thumb
- animated scrolling on page up/down and reconnection
- a visual connection between the thumb and the overlay
- a slightly modified shape for the thumb too!
Here a video with the most updated version:
Animated scroll and new delays for Ayatana overlay scrollbar from Andrea Cimitan on Vimeo.
Despite our efforts to materialize our vision, there are many toolkits that need to implement them to provide a consistent experience across Unity. We would be more than happy to assist anyone interested in this work stream, in particular: XUL, Qt and the web browser Chromium. If you’re willing to help or you have any question related to the implementation and the technology used, don’t hesitate contacting our software engineer Andrea Cimitan
Here’s a question: Why is the shape of the thumb now squared?
Hi CruelAngel, it is less rounded to be more in line with other UI elements of the theme.
Don’t forget Wx-based applications (wxwidgets).
We had to disable overlay scrollbar from within the application (Padre, a Perl IDE) because it causes screen corruption (horizontal lines).
Claudio
I like the changes so far. The squarer thumb definitely feels nicer to me. I just wish the orange scroll indicator was a little less bright. (Is it possible for it to be semi-transparent?).
Sounds like you’re planning to cover instant scroll on middle click at some point, so I’m curious how you plan to do that :)
I’m also wondering how smooth scrolling fits with the scope of the scroll bar itself. Is it just the scrollbar that animates smoothly, or is the scrolling itself being changed? If it’s the scrolling itself, is that change being handled separately from overlay scrollbars?
Okay. I understand.
awesome, according to Dylan semi transparent is more beautiful
unfortunately, these were more issues with gdk and/or bugs in wxwidgets. I didn’t dive into understanding how to fix them yet, though I hope they will be fixed when wxwidgets will start to use gtk+3
not technically possible to use semi-transparent scroll indicator right now, will be with gtk+4 (planned for the year, more likely in a year).
as you can see in the screencast, is the scrolling being animated, and is done internally with the scrollbars (a feature of the overlay scrollbars, is not animated in gtk+ apps).
cheers
we all agree, and was in the initial plans. let’s wait for gtk+4 as I wrote above
I am still not fully convinced by the way you disconnect the thumb from the pager: it is nice that now, if one grabs the thumb after a couple of PgUps, a smooth animation helps making clear that the pager (and the document) is going back to its initial position (before the PgUps).
However is this behaviour useful, or is it just a drawback of the current design? Would anybody actually need to keep track of where she was before the PgUps/Downs and go back so quickly?
I still think (may be wrong of course) that being able to scroll after a PgUp/Down (for “fine graining”) without the distracting need to aim again at the pager to “resynchronize” the thumb should be a valid usecase.
(sorry for the long post)
Are there any design/implementation reasons for not making the thumb and mouse automatically follow the pager during PgUp/Down?
Of course, these are just MHO and your work is wonderful!! :)
is not animated with gtk+ native scrollbars, I meant ;)
Will we get anti-aliased window borders with GTK4? Currently looks kinda bad in my opinion. Why don’t we use square windows when we don’t have anti-aliasing?
Does this mean that Firefox works with the scrollbars now? If not, is that in the works?
While I agree these look like improvements, I wonder why we need these scrollbars at all, especially as the default. Surely opt-in is a safer choice?
For me, on a laptop without a mouse they’re a big step backwards in usability. I’m slowed down by trying to hover over a particular area and then drag, especially in a very long window. My usual scrollbar behaviour of clicking once somewhere in the scrollbar’s vertical range to make it move up or down is instant and doesn’t require hovering/dragging. At least some of my favourite programs don’t use these scrollbars (e.g. Opera) but hearing that you plan to eventually override this has me even more worried.
On top of this, there are a surprisingly large number of users for whom accessibility is an issue, whether it’s lack of dexterity, poor eyesight, or just needing more time to think, and I dread to think how they cope with partially hidden scrollbars.
I know there are also those who love the overlay scrollbars. I believe the implementation is good, but as a concept they put many users at a disadvantage which, IMO, is not Canonical’s overall intention. For something as fundamental as scrolling, please consider reverting to standard behaviour and make this an option similar to visual effects that can be easily switched on by more confident or more able users.
Hi Zap, I think the fine tuning after PgUp/PgDown it’s a valid use case, we considered that and preferred to keep the thumb behaviour tidier but probably there is something we can do about it. I will give some further thoughts on it. Thanks for the feedback!
Firefox uses XUL, we would be glad if someone from the community can help us to make it happen.
Hi Daniel, we want Ubuntu to be for everyone so I can confirm you we are evaluating options to make them more tight to the theme or accessibility settings. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Don’t forget the swing java toolkit!
Thank you!
The thumb and scrollbar are two separate entities for no reason I can discern. One can’t scroll by placing the mouse on the scrollbar. You have to mouse over the scrollbar to make the thumb appear, and then move the mouse over to the thumb to operate it. It’s too easy to overshoot the thumb upon which it disappears, and overshoot it again trying to make it appear again. It’s harder to place the mouse on the scrollbar, or even to see it because it is both thinner and shorter as a target than the conventional scrollbar. How extensively was this invention tested? The frustration of using it led me to discontinue using Ubuntu and stop recommending it to others.
Further to comments by Daniel (and to an extent Bevo, but I’m still using Ubuntu!) above, I am also struggling with the loss of being able to click in the vertical range to get an effect *similar to* but not the same as PgDn. I spend a lot of time looking at long lists of emails (many left unread in a shared mailbox) and this applies to my use of RSS readers too – I want to skim-read the titles of each post/email to see if I want to read more, and then move down to the next screen-full to see the next set, but if I do use the PgDn key, I end up marking things read, and loading stuff I didn’t want to see. Similarly, it is very hard to grab the scrollbar and try to mimic this behaviour because even a couple of pixels of downward movement can result in scrolling past several screens of content if there is a lot in the list.
I really like the idea of the new scrollbars and the elegance and space they save, but I really miss being able to click in the empty scroll bar track to move a page down… Perhaps it could work in such a way that when I mouse over any area that is where the scroll bar “used to be”, the overlay appears, but for the length of the window (maybe a lighter shade of the scrollbar?) and I can click in this to restore the lost functionality?
Hello Bevo. I think your willingness to spend time commenting here (to help improve Ubuntu in the long-term) demonstrates that you care about about Ubuntu and people’s experiences with it, even if you’re not personally using Ubuntu yourself at the moment. (Thank you for taking the time to help and give feedback).
Talking of feedback, increasingly in the last 10 years, this is what the scrollbars have transformed into: a mechanism to give the user feedback that more content is visible off-screen and that the viewport can be changed. The actual process of movement can frequently takes places using alternative input techniques:
In all of these (now increasingly common cases) the scrollbar functionality has been moved from an input mechanism to a feedback mechanism. For those using edge-scrolling or multi-touch they have begun to occupy space that could be used for fullscreen content.
It’s a hard problem of course, balancing new with old, and the solution is likely somewhere down the middle; with the ideal solution being tied to a particular device, user behaviour, date, time and place. The Overlay Scrollbars are an attempt to find a halfway house: something that works for direct-input scrolling of the present and future, and also works for traditional pointer users who are used to being able to interact with the viewport indirectly.
And of course, it’s continually being refined, especially in regard to feedback—such as the use-cases that you’ve provided.
Hi Martin, which problem do you find with the page up and down behaviour of the overlay scrollbars we implemented? Is it fine tuning?
Hi Christian,
I think it’s just often “a long way away” in terms of mouse travel, and not so easy to hit really.
Cheers, Martin.
If I understand it correctly, the problem is that “PgDown by Left-Click on the scrollbar rail” was faster and easier than “PgDown by aiming at the Overlay”.
Personally, I think the Overlay is superior, because even if it takes a bit more to aim at it, then you never end up in that awkward situation when (with a classic scrollbar) the scrollbar reaches or surpasses the place where you previously put the cursor, so the next left-click will provide a PgUp instead of a PgDown, which is confusing if you are focussing on the content.
I think the overlay feels less comfortable now just because it still needs some minor improvements, such as fine-tuning (see above :P) and better reaction to fast taps with a touchpad (erroneously mistaken for grab events, bringing back the document to the initial point; I will file a bug on this when I find the time to test Oneiric.).
But the corners of windows, icons and the ubuntu logo are all rounded, wouldn’t it make more sense for the scrollbars to stay rounded?
Im glad that the missing features are being talked about. I frequently use instant scroll by middle clicking, so I hope there is a way to implement this again with the new scrollbars
…maybe the solution could have been as simple as just making the original scrollbar thinner while still usable for those left with a plain old mouse.
The current “popup scroller” seems to be shown as a cool feature in every unity video and personally i think it more cause of confusion rather than something innovative and practical.
From your own words: a lot more work is required to get homogeneous experience with this feature (Qt, Chromium etc, that’s one reason I turned it off, btw). My question: In this light – how the heck it made it as the default in the release? So everyone who uses computers for work (vs entertainment mostly) has to waste time disabling it together with some other exceptional innovations thrown in by Unity. Looks like Ubuntu peaked up and the down slope is starting.
Dear Sirs:
quote:
(Your requirements.)
Has to reduce at the minimum the usage of screen real-estate: to provide more immersive experiences.
Has to allow the user the ability to interact with 100% of the content surface: to be able to work over any content already created.
Has to work well both on cursor driven UI and on touch ones: this is a prerequisite of any Unity solution.
Shouldn’t conflict with the window resizing functionalities (ie. dragging windows borders)
end quote.
I notice that none of the requirements listed are USABILITY and FUNCTIONALITY. While the bar looks cool (if you are into cool), it is totally useless. Imagine you are a driving 18 wheel truck. Imagine that a child is running across the street. Imagine that your break would be this scrollbar. So, to stop the truck you take two steps (1) hunt for the scrollbar, (2) push on the break. Ooops you ran over the child.
The MORAL of the story. Cool is cool. But usability and functionality comes first.
Getting to the saving space. Typical window is 100mm x 100mm. Typical normal scrollbar is 3mmx 100mm on the bottom and 3mm x 100mm on the right. So total area of normal useful scrollbars is 3×100 + 3×100= 600mm^2. Total window area is 100mm x 100mm = 10,000mm^2. In other words by making the scrollbar invisible (and useless) you saved 600/10,000 or 6 lousy percent.
-respectfully
-Jim
One suggestion:
the thumb should appear whenever the mouse pointer hovers onto the (right/left) side (or bottom) of the window, irrespective of the position of the “scroll indicator” (= the line that shows where in the scroll we are). Instant scrolling should be adapted to this new behaviour accordingly.
Otherwise the user is obliged to:
1) identify the scroll indicator (not always easy to spot immediately)
2) on average, move the mouse a lot to reach the scroll indicator spot (whereas previously one would have simply clicked below or above the scroll cursor).
By the way, this missing feature is what made me disable the overlay scrollbars.
@Go4linux, sorry to hear that you disabled them, but you should be glad to know that we are working around the issues you identified ;)
https://plus.google.com/107658363031614745288/posts/48wXQECMgyr?hl=en
Hopefully you will enable them soon!
The overlay scroll bars are probably a great idea for new users or migration to tablets, but why with the bold decision was there not the thought to add an off switch somewhere in settings?
I also disable the overlay scroll bars as well as the global menu. These features may well be great for tablets and perhaps even an interesting attraction for new users, but the rest of the world are quite used to traditional scroll bars and the in-application-context menu’s aren’t they?
Word it as a bold decision if you wish, but the end result has not changed – ubuntu has allowed designers to ‘force’ their opinions onto end users that were already happy. :-(
I understand that it have been some time since the news have been published, but I have a question.
Is there any work scheduled in the foreseeable future on the integration of the Overlay Scrollbars into the most popular applications for the Unity desktop, such as Firefox, Chromium and LibreOffice?
The new scrollbars are great, but they would be really difficult to appreciate if we cannot see them in nearly any of most used applications.
Hi Paul, consistency across the system is a very important factor for us!
Unfortunately, implementing such feature on other toolkits is not as straight forward as it might seem.
It has been a few cycles we tried to involve upstream for support without great success so far. On our hand we are trying to make this process as easier as possible (eg. refactoring the code).
Hopefully we are going to have some good news on this front soon!
Thanks for your opinion.
I just wanted to ad my voice to the ones annoyed with the scrollbar feature. They, the universal menus and a wine related issue that only popped up in Ubuntu 11 are what made me quit using Ubuntu all together for over a year. A year in misery using Windows 7- it came “free” with a new computer. A year is enough and I’m back struggling with these “cool” features. Just to let you know, I’m not using this on a phone so the eighth of an inch saved by hiding the scrollbars is ridiculous! Plus, when using a program like Audacity which uses the menus repeatedly, it is extremely annoying to have to use the universal menus at the top of the screen. If you truly care about ease of use, make these awful choices an option I can get rid of. I have been an ecstatic user of Ubuntu for years- telling all I could about how safe and stable it is- until Ubuntu 11. Now I’m just putting up with it. (yet it is still far safer and more stable than the crap you pay over $100 for.)