SynthV's Scrollbars - Where Are They? (Visibility Issues)

[dcuny]

I have a number of issues with SynthV’s scrollbars. The problem: I’m constantly hunting for the scrollbars thumbs.

• They are tiny. That makes them hard to find, and hard to grab.

• They don’t have dedicated space on panes. Instead, they share space with whatever is behind them. So if you miss the scrollbar thumb, you can unintentionally grab something in the background.

• Color contrast is terrible, so I’m constantly searching for the scrollbar. Here’s an example of low-contrast grey on low contrast grey:

• The thumb can completely disappear. For example, if I’m using the scrollbar on the piano view, I can drag it to the left or right and have the scrollbar for the parameters pane disappear. For example, in the image below, you can see the thumb on the Piano Roll still has room to travel to the left (top), but the thumb for the Parameters is already at the clipping point:

Dragging the thumb of the Piano Roll further to the left causes the thumb for the Parameters to completely disappear:

• Scrollbars Don’t Always Appear. I closed the Parameters window, and re-opened it, and the lower scrollbar thumb is no longer displayed. That appeared is no longer visible.

There are a couple things that could be done:

• Use gutters to make the scrollbars visible
• Make thumbs wider/higher
• Use contrasting colors to make UI elements visible

Thanks!

[impbox]

This seems like a common UI anti-pattern lately and it’s terrible. Real scrollbars with dedicated space are so much better. That said, I rarely use the scrollbars and just use the mouse-wheel instead, but for accessibility reasons real scrollbars would be great, even if it’s optional.

[impbox]

Reaper’s scrollbars are a good example (except perhaps for contrast), they are compact, have dedicated space, allow zooming to a section by moving from the ends.