Tek-Bull

Hakon Wium the Creator of CSS is Trying to Kill the Scroll Bar Across all Browsers

Just recently Hakon Wium Lie, the creator of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets said that he want’s to kill the scroll bar permanently. There are specific things and areas of the browsers that are required to have a good user experience. The Scroll bar is one of them. The address URL bar is another, Google has already been experimenting with the destruction of the URL bar, but scroll bars? If you’re a Mac User than you know that the OS X Lion comes with the scroll bar automatically shut off.  But if Lie gets his way, every browser will have disabled bars.

The reason being is because every new modern day browser want’s to have more space. And the scroll bar takes about 20 pixels or more from the side of the screen and that’s just not acceptable right? This new change is going to be a very radical one to accept. I for one love to know exactly how far down I have to go before I run out of content, removing the bar is always going to leave you wondering where you are. Additionally, the only way to scroll down is by pressing the Up and Down arrows on the keyboard, the arrows on the bar, or by grabbing the scroll bar and moving it up and down. Some monitors like the all in one monitors have the ability to touch the screen and scroll the same way you would with an iPad or iPhone. Laptops have the touch pad with the invisible bar, and some, not all, computer mice have the scroll wheel.

Lie’s reasoning is a little radical, his main two reasons are:

1) Content doesn’t fit in the browser window the way it’s supposed to because the 20 pixels are to much.
2) Printing web pages is a pain in the rear.

Lie’s idea is to replace the Scroll bars with CSS generated Content for Page Media. Which pretty much means that the “pages” for the internet are going to be displayed on your browser with buttons that you can simply flip to the next page, or go back to the previous one. It would be the same thing as when you flip the page on the nook or an iPad. When the page is displayed, you simply press the button, and it flips to the next “bottom” area of your site.

This move is going to turn every website into an online magazine. Which is going to bring up several problems, in my opinion, how are you going to find something on a page? Unless you use the “find feature” you’re going to have to flip the page – wait for rendering and loading – go to the next page – wait for rendering and loading again – until you find what you are looking for. Then you run into a plethora of other problems. Opening links, skimming through content, playing videos that land in the middle of the fold, etc.

I think that pages are great, on the iPad, iPhone, or even the Nooks, but not on a computer screen. If I wanted to get rid of my scroll bar, I should have the option to do it. Also, my scroll bar on my 36″ monitor is not getting in the way of anything. Not to be mean Mr. Lie, but if the scroll bar is getting in the way, I think it’s time for you to get a bigger computer monitor.

Via Macworld