Le 27 mai 05 à 11:19, David Chisnall a écrit :
Has anyone noticed how much scroll-bars suck? They are not bad as a display component, and they are okay if you want to scroll approximately, by a line, or by a page (as long as you are not near the end of a large document), but for anything else they are really painful.Can we come up with something better? The thing where scroll bars really fall down is the ability to scroll an arbitrary (smallish) amount accurately. I would propose (as a first approximation) placing a dial at one end of the scroll bar (perhaps replacing the arrows, perhaps in addition), which could be dragged in a circular motion for fined grained positioning of the scroller. This would eliminate the digital nature of the buttons.For Fitts' Law constraints, we should make the dial as large as possible, although we are probably limited by the width of the scroll-bar. I would probably like to make the dial expand while the mouse is held down on it so people can see it a bit more clearly.
I think it's an excellent idea ! I wouldn't replace the arrows, but adding a dial at the other end of the scrollbar would be neat.
When clicked, a big dial is shown (popup window..)What could perhaps be done too, is to have the dial with two sections, like :
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The center would be used for "quick" deplacement, while the outer ring will be a very precise/slow deplacement... the mouse will "stick" inside the rings so you could easily rotate (no risk of going outside). A ok behavior could be, one click on the dial icon popup the big dial, keeping the mouse button pressed you stay in the center, when you release the button you can move freely the mouse; clicking outside the dial will make it disappear, clicking again on the dial will keep the mouse in the corresponding section (eg, the outer ring), etc.
-- Nicolas Roard "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke
