[Sigia-l] Scrollbars

[Ziya Oz]

As some predict, come Monday Apple may unveil the next chapter in Core
Animation, change our gestalt on UI paradigms for desktop apps and move to a
gestural universe, much as it did for the iPhone.

What if, as a small example, they got rid of the scrollbar, just the way it
disappeared on the iPhone? You flick up or down to advance, and Leopard can
detect mouse acceleration for speed of scrolling.

What cognitive UI aspects would we then lose? Obviously, the size/pages of
the displayed document indicated by the scrollbar. Other custom UI patterns
like the Adobe Acrobat scrollbars where if you hold and drag the scrollbar
you get the (scrolling) page number and a small preview. What else would we
lose/miss?

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Ziya

In design, interaction is the last resort.