Comment by eviks
11 hours ago
> Holding Shift while clicking on the scroll bar jumps the thumb directly to the spot where you clicked.
In properly designed bars this is either a default or a configurable option. Moving your mouse to a far away bar and holding shift are more expensive actions than pressing PgDn (or a shortcut), so the action can't be just a page, it has to be something more valuable, harder to replicate (the even smaller arrows at the top/bottom are even worse)
Completely agree. Besides, if clicking above/below the thumb is PgUp/PgDn, that means the buttons get smaller as you get closer to your destination, making them harder to press. Not good UX! The main counter argument to instantly moving I can think of, is that people may miss-click when trying to resize a window, and struggle to find their way back. Maybe a Ctrl-Z for window location history wouldn't be such a bad idea. You could piggyback off Vim's jump list which is navigable with Ctrl-O and Ctrl-I, though I'm sure a lot of applications already register those mappings.
Leave a visual "shadow" of the scroll knob at the old position every time somebody clicks the bar to jump. Then the user can quickly snap back to where they where.
Then they can also jump back and forth effortlessly between two places in a document.
> counter ... people may miss-click when trying to resize a window
That's a counter against another common sin of UI design that's stuck in the past, another superficially appealing idea that requires users hunting for tiny lines for common operations. That one should be fixed instead of making the scroll bar worse. (they even have that whole dedicated "windows" button that doesn't properly manage... windows)
Besides, lack of proper universal undo (that can undo selection/position changes, including windows) is yet another desktop UI design failure. Similarly to what you've noted, the solution to which is yet again fixing that instead of breaking useful functionality in other elements. So maybe it should be Win+Z to undo window resizing/moving?
My windows button properly handles windows. Window + left arrow snaps left. Windows + down snaps it down. Etc… It’s literally the best default window manager any OS has.
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