Comment by leptons
19 hours ago
shift-clicking isn't necessary. Your screen has a resolution higher than 20 pixels wide, doesn't it? Maybe your screen is 1280 pixels wide? Well that could be 1280 steps for a slider, or a knob. It's also a bit dependent on the resolution of the pointing device, too.
And 20 pixels wide on a modern screen is so tiny you would have trouble seeing it, so the whole premise of a "20 px knob" is blown. A slider with 100 pixels width would also be pretty small. The smallest I'd make it to work on a modern screen is at least 250 pixels wide. And that's plenty of resolution for most things. If a slider is more important, make it bigger, and you get more resolution.
Arguing about a 20 pixel knob or slider is kind of stupid considering how small that actually is in screen real estate. If the knob or slider is 20 pixels in any direction then you have other UX problems.
I am not arguing about a 20 pixel slider, not even arguing, that was just a random number which works just as well as any other number to demonstrate the problem and why knobs have their place despite having their own problems. Shift clicking was also just an example, one of the many tricks you can use, which is why I said "shift clicking or the like."
Doing things like 6 pixels of movement on the screen equal 1 pixel on the slider can cause problems with display scaling and will mean if you have sliders near the edge of the screen you will not be able to use jump on click and even then can be a headache.
It is an interesting topic and far from solved.