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RE: Scroll bar details
by sbenitezb on Thu 10th Dec 2009 21:27 UTC in reply to "Scroll bar details"
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To allow you to abort your movement operation you can move the mouse cursor outside a certain area. This behavior is consistent with other controls, such as a push button where you can press down a button and then regret your click by moving the cursor away from the button and release your mouse button.

But a button activates an action, so there must be a way to cancel the action from being triggered once you already pushed the button. The scrollbar acts really different. Consistency just for the sake of it is dumb. It's normal that when you drag the scroller your hand move away from the vertical bar, as the hand is optimized for horizontal movement through an arc, not vertical movement. And when you are focused on reading some text, your mind is telling your hand to follow the eyes, so it deviates from the scroller position. The way KDE (just as an example) does it is more correct, as I can drag the scroll bar and move the pointer around the screen and it doesn't reset the scroller position. I believe the way Windows implements it is more a limitation of Win32 controls than pursuing consistency.

Edited 2009-12-10 21:30 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 1