[Sugar-devel] Scrollbar width

[Art Hunkins]

I'd surely suggest that SoaS use Alt+touchpad. (Or on Windows keyboards, 
surely the Windows keys are also available.)

SoaS sorely needs a keyboard shortcut.

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sean DALY" <sdaly.be at gmail.com>
To: "Eben Eliason" <eben.eliason at gmail.com>; "Gary C Martin" 
<gary at garycmartin.com>; <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 1:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Scrollbar width


> I'm not sure, is there an equivalent for non-XO keyboards?
>
> A pity the scrollbar is so thin when there are so many pixels available.
>
> Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be useful to offer an optional
> rollover bubble mode like on the old pre-OSX Macs, useful for
> describing key combo equivalents in an unfamiliar interface...
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> FWIW, I have seen lots of kids ages 6-8 who know what a scrollbar is,
>>> but have a hard time mousing it up and down when using SoaS, even on a
>>> larger screen such as the Dell Latitude 2100 education netbook.
>>
>> This, incidentally, is precisely the reason the grab key was designed.
>> Scrolling in this manner requires continuous pressure on the mouse
>> button, while simultaneously moving the finger across the trackpad,
>> which can be difficult, especially on smaller laptops, and for
>> smaller/younger fingers with less developed motor skills.
>>
>> The grab button (there, quite crucially, are two of these on the XO:
>> one on each side of the spacebar) was designed to allow children to
>> use their non-dominant hand to press the button while using their
>> other hand on the trackpad to manipulate the view. This design was
>> meant both to eliminate the need to "target" the scrollbar in the
>> first place (since this would work anywhere within the scrolling
>> region, just like 2-fingered scrolling), and to make it easier for
>> children to do since drag'n'drop can be tricky.
>>
>> Eben
>>
>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 10 Dec 2009, at 14:58, Eben Eliason wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Paul Fox <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>>>> benjamin wrote:
>>>>>>  > Hello,
>>>>>>  >
>>>>>>  > On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 22:43 -0500, Art Hunkins wrote:
>>>>>>  > > I've now got whole-screen scrollbars working well in my music 
>>>>>> activities,
>>>>>>  > > but I'd like to make the bars wider. The automatic settings (as 
>>>>>> used in most
>>>>>>  > > activities) are too narrow for my taste.
>>>>>>  >
>>>>>>  > First of all I would like to say: Please do not play with themes, 
>>>>>> just
>>>>>>  > because you don't like something that much ... (especially should 
>>>>>> you
>>>>>>  > dislike them in general and not only in your activity)
>>>>>>  >
>>>>>>  > Other than that. IIRC the reason for the scrollbars to be that 
>>>>>> narrow
>>>>>>  > was the plan to use the Grab-Key+Touchpad for scrolling. This 
>>>>>> means that
>>>>>>  > the main purpose of the scorllbar is to show the position, but not 
>>>>>> to
>>>>>>  > use the handle itself for scrolling.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and just in case it's not clear from the above -- the 
>>>>>> grab-key+touchpad
>>>>>> feature is present in XO-1.5 releases, and available for the XO-1 if 
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> olpc-kbdshim package is installed.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was a proponent for grab scrolling in the early days of Sugar at
>>>>> OLPC. However, it seems clear now that, without customized hardware
>>>>> (which was the assumption back then) this solution simply isn't viable
>>>>> as an intuitive and discoverable way to navigate content. I think that
>>>>> retaining the functionality via some other mapping or shortcut would
>>>>> be nice (especially to offer the functionality as designed on the XO
>>>>> hardware itself), but I don't see reason not to improve the usability
>>>>> of Sugar on all platforms by increasing the scrollbars to a more
>>>>> manageable width.
>>>>
>>>> I'd argue the narrow scrollbar width is still a relevant design choice, 
>>>> being there to indicate document length and current view location into 
>>>> it. Most non-XO hardware platforms are very likely to have their own 
>>>> hardware support for a scroll wheel type behaviour. I very rarely need 
>>>> to drag a scrollbar these days, it's all two fingered scrolling which 
>>>> works fine in Sugar on a VM (though we could do with a control panel to 
>>>> adjust sensitivity).
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> --Gary
>>>>
>>>>> Of course, in addition to this we should make sure that wherever
>>>>> possible the scrollbars are given every last pixel up to the edge of
>>>>> the screen, so that they become, effectively infinite in width (or
>>>>> height, when horizontal), thus making them difficult to miss.
>>>>>
>>>>> Eben
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> paul
>>>>>> =---------------------
>>>>>>  paul fox, pgf at laptop.org
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>>>
>>
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