XP was skinned like a very tacky Fischer Price toy, with garish colors and oversized elements that would have been more at home on a touchscreen. I don't think anyone called it a good theme unsarcastically. Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.
Don't get me started.
Pros of a proper always-present scrollbar with appropriately-styled thumb:
- It indicates that the thing you're viewing even is scrollable. - You can see at once where you are in a document, and how large it is relative to your viewport. - It offers a convenient UI to scroll in both small or large amounts, or scroll to the very top or bottom. For lots of uses the scroll wheel on your mouse is a substitute, but certainly not for everything.
Cons:
- It takes a tiny bit of screen real estate - It offends some people's esthetics taste, I guess
Almost like the removal of scrollbars had nothing to do with saving space.
As in "something even a child could use"? Indeed
> Why do we even need always visible scroll bars?
To know how long the page is, to know what state we are BEFORE we interact with it, to know that there is no such a thing as "above the fold" or other nonsense, etc.
Now allow me to ask you, with no intention to sound like an ass: why would you hide bars apart from saving 20px (which I assume was Windows' default, but let's say 100px for discussion' sake)?
Why? How often the first thing you do is look at the scroll bar and close a document because it's too short or too long?
If you're gonna read it you'll read it regardless of its length.
If you want to do anything else, like printing, you'll see the document size.
> to know what state we are BEFORE we interact with it
Why? If you open a new document you'll be at the top.
It's almost always immediately obvious that there would be more text.
If it's a previously opened document then you may be in the position you were in when you last opened it. In which case, you would remember that you're not at the beginning or end, and again it's usually immediately obvious that you're not at the beginning or end.
We come down to these facts:
- There's almost NO case that's ALWAYS improved by having always visible bars.
- Hidden bars always save screen space for more content and reduced clutter.
- Literally billions of people are fine with hidden bars (iOS, Android, Mac)
- If you need to see scroll bars, there's an option, at least on Mac.
Optional scroll bars are win/win.
What if it's one of those webpages with a full height hero as the first element and no indicator you can actually scroll?
What if I want to click and drag the scroll to a specific location but have to take wild flailing guesses at where the scrollbar actually is because it keeps going invisible?
We design interfaces for the many first, and keep them as simple as possible but not simpler.
