On a "scroll control" roll: Context sensitive mousing
By Eddie Lopez. Friday, 11. August 2006, 16:54:15
The topic du jour is context sensitive scrolling you can do in differing text areas in web pages. "The what now?" you ask? Okay- you have the overall page scrollbar that you can control with a mouse wheel (this post is talking about just scrolling- no clicking to 'pan'). In addition, say you're on a page with a form and you've got a text area with its own scroll bar. If you didn't start browsing yesterday, you've noticed that if you hover your mouse over this textarea, you can control that textarea scroll bar by rolling the mouse wheel. Its a context, or mode; the scroll wheel changes what it manipulates based on the where it's at on the page. See the portion of gmail at right. Two scroll bars, and depending on what you're pointing at, you scroll different things.
I know modes and context are taboo in usability, but I actually find them quite useful in browsing/using the mouse. With only a guess to back me up, I'd say it's easier to have contexts with a mouse since since you're generally paying attention to where the mouse is currently pointing (if you're scrolling the wheel, it's actually in your hand and you're controlling it). That is a user controlled mode switch. You're moving the mouse over the text area, so it's more likely that you know what context the mouse is in (granted, that may not be clear the first time around, but you learn it quickly).
The problem arises when the system pops you out of that context when you don't explicitly tell it to do so. That's when things get slightly confusing, or in the case of scroll bars, annoying.
You'll notice in most browsers, if you have your mouse over a text area and you reach the end of your scrolling, control is automatically switched back to the page scroll bar. So... if you were trying to just scroll to the top of your text area to insert something at the top, when you get there, you're all the sudden scrolling way above the text area.
What are your thoughts on this? Is it annoying or useful for you? Do you like having the control switch like that? I've found it most annoying when I'm trying to scroll an entire page and my cursor scrolls over a textarea...it's like dropping into some quicksand for a second. I have to move out and get back on task.
Ideally, if I initiate my scroll (ie- get my scroll on) at the page level it should keep the control at that level. At LEAST until I complete the first scroll (ie- take my finger off the wheel and move it back to the origin to scroll again). And if I start out in a form element, I'd like the browser to force me to move my cursor away from it, back to the page, so that I can control the page scrollbar. These are not fool-proof, but they give the user more control over the "mode switch."
WIDGETIZE
hermen2048 # 12. August 2006, 10:34
FoxM # 13. August 2006, 16:17
I hope Windows can change this behaviour (I hate when MSN Messenger oppens a new window without permission. I feel abused!)
dantesoft # 14. August 2006, 06:18
I would accept having to press a key if you want to get sand-trapped and scroll the context element you're hovering. And conversely, when you are sand-trapped and want to get out.
@FoxM: MSN Messenger ? What does that have to do with it ?
kmaage # 14. August 2006, 08:03
Nope. Gotcha!
When scrolling, you're not paying attention to the pointer. You're paying attention to the thing you want scrolled. You're thinking "page" "textbox" "list." You only think about the pointer when you want to click on something.
The only way to discern where the users attention is focused (which is what we're concerned about, not pointers or boxes or scrollbars), is to use an eye tracking system. And even then, it's not precise enough, since we humans can mentally shift focus ("look at") something else over small distances without even moving our eyes! (Wikipedia on "Attention") I would even guess that when we move the scrollwheel, we initiate the action before we move our eyes to the thing we are scrolling.
So, what are we left with? An educated guess as to what the user intends to scroll. Until some detailed research is done on scroll wheel usage paterns, we are left with this usability principle: Do everything possible to avoid ambiguous input contexts. (Don't make multiple scrollalble regions!) Because you never really know where the user is focusing their attention.
Anonymous # 14. August 2006, 14:41
> Fortunately for us Opera already has this feature of
> detecting the context of the mouse and not jump to
> other context while working.
Not quite true. If you scroll down so that a scrollable text area gets under the pointer then opera starts scrolling the text area instead.
An even more annoying scrolling moronity that opera used to have was that when reading and scrolling email messages it would jump to the next message when you tried to scroll down at the end of the previous message. Since people don't look at the scrollbar at the same time as they read a message they very often try to scroll down when they don't realize that they are at the end of the message. Then it jumps to the next message although they didn't read the end of the previous message yet. Then comes the next stupidity; when going back to the previous message it doesn't go to the end but instead to the beginning of the message, which means you have to scroll down once more (and perhaps again risking going past the end, jumping to the next message and try once more). All this was message-jumping was extremely annoying, but I think they fixed it in 9.0 or 9.01, though. However, I hope the guy who made this "feature" in the first place is fired, or at least isn't allowed to make new "features" in the future.
Eddie_Lopez # 14. August 2006, 14:57
True, thanks for breaking that down. I think I want to go back into the archive and capture all of your "Usability Principles" as they are often the best part of the posts. Thanks
Marcus-
Right, I was going to respond that Opera does in fact suffer from the scrolling problems I mentioned.
Anonymous # 4. September 2007, 17:19
I am a bog standard, non- techie type PC user. So please make your replies idiot-proof !! My scroll has changed fom a smooth roll to a page roll down. Not very clear I 'm afraid. Can anyone suggest anything ?? The text jumps about before my very eyes......