Why is hiding the scrollbar(s) today so necessary for real estate reclamation, when it wasn't necessary when 1024x768 was an above average screen size?
Mice with scroll wheels existed then, and were common, at least in Alaska, where I was at the time.
It's only in the last few years of computers with mouse-driven GUIs that suddenly the scrollbar is intolerable for UX people. Suddenly users are saying that a scrollbar is unacceptable? Really? Or are the survey questions worded to produce the results desired by the designer? The latter seems much more likely. (It's hard NOT to bias survey questions, if you don't know how easy it is to bias them accidentally.)
I can't believe that is the honest truth of the situation. I worked with my fair share of excellent designers, and I can't recall any of them ever groaning about any browser chrome, like a scroll bar, ever, with the notable exception of the viewable page space consumed by browser plugins which each added their own toolbar to the browser UI itself. What a horrid period of time that was...
If it is such an urgent need, where was that need 20 years ago? The web hasn't changed THAT MUCH. Scroll bars were an accepted thing; unquestioned. But today they're too intrusive? Or they consume too much space? What the?
I understand that the science of interactivity has matured, so I'm willing to admit that we know more about how users behave than we did 20 years ago. I still don't believe that any UI would ever benefit from hidden scroll bars over always visible scroll bars.
Mice with scroll wheels existed then, and were common, at least in Alaska, where I was at the time.
It's only in the last few years of computers with mouse-driven GUIs that suddenly the scrollbar is intolerable for UX people. Suddenly users are saying that a scrollbar is unacceptable? Really? Or are the survey questions worded to produce the results desired by the designer? The latter seems much more likely. (It's hard NOT to bias survey questions, if you don't know how easy it is to bias them accidentally.)
I can't believe that is the honest truth of the situation. I worked with my fair share of excellent designers, and I can't recall any of them ever groaning about any browser chrome, like a scroll bar, ever, with the notable exception of the viewable page space consumed by browser plugins which each added their own toolbar to the browser UI itself. What a horrid period of time that was...
If it is such an urgent need, where was that need 20 years ago? The web hasn't changed THAT MUCH. Scroll bars were an accepted thing; unquestioned. But today they're too intrusive? Or they consume too much space? What the?
I understand that the science of interactivity has matured, so I'm willing to admit that we know more about how users behave than we did 20 years ago. I still don't believe that any UI would ever benefit from hidden scroll bars over always visible scroll bars.