On Sat, 13 Feb 1999, Joachim Durchholz wrote:

> Maybe making the minimum size so that it is at least as high as it is
> wide would be even better. The user can then immediately see whether the
> scrollbar represents actual size or is at minimum size: the scroll bar
> will be square if the latter is the case.

Not a bad idea, although a square size scrollbar as a bare minimum sounds
a little bit bigger than necessary... when you bring up a list of senders
of "+", the square scrollbar would take up almost 1/3 of the vertical
scroll region.  (I don't have a strong opinion on this, though.)

> Another proposal: For a vertical scrollbar, add a horizontal dark line
> in the middle. It's just for show, but it will make the visual
> impression of "I am *right here*" much stronger. (Look at any equalizer
> or any other real-world device with sliders: Most if not all will have
> that middle line.)

Yeah, I've seen sliders with that line before, although I'm not sure if
I've seen scrollbars like that.  The SGI (and the Mac) scrollbars both
have a few lines of "texture" right in the middle of the bar which I like
a little bit better... again, just for show, I'd guess.  (Maybe it gives
you a sense of something to grab...)

Your comment of "I am right here" gave me an idea, though.  I was thinking
for a second when I read that that while the scrollbar represents the
current page/portion that you can see of a larger region, the horizontal
line could represent the selected item in a list, or the cursor location
in a text area.  So, you could draw a line (or something) at the top 1/4
of the bar if the cursor location in the text area is 1/4 way up the
viewable area.  If the cursor location were above the currently viewed
area, the marker would appear above the bar (in the blue scroll region). 
This could be cool...  are there any existing scrollbars that do this?  It
would have to be a subtle enough indicator so as to not distract too much
from displaying the regular scrollbar part.

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technogies, Ann Arbor, MI
  dway at eai.com, dway at mat.net
  http://www.transom.com

  Smalltalk: Guaranteed Y10K Compliant