I find this basic idea quite intriguing and of course it is very
Smalltalk-like. At this late stage of the WIMP interface's history it may be
too late to untrain or retrain the current generation of users but I think
exploring alternative UI components like this could bear fruit in the
next-generation user interface.

Actually, I would take the whole concept of the future UI one step farther and
suggest that perhaps moving away from total standardization and going more to a
Squeak-like world where users get to select how they want their UIs to work may
have some serious merit. We have, I think, become stuck in the notion that
users need predictability across machines and even across operating systems to
some degree, yet how many people do you know who run more than one machine or,
at most, two different machines (one at work and one at home)? Vanishingly few.

So perhaps rather than busying ourselves with a difficult if not impossible
task of designing what _the_ next UI should look like, we should be
experimenting with the notion of creating lots of different UI components
(morphs) users can _easily_ assemble into a user experience _they_ understand
and prefer?


--- Thomas Kuehne <kuehne at informatik.uni-kl.de> wrote:
> I would like to propose an alternative way of dealing with scrollbars.
> 
> What annoys me about scrollbars is that I have to move the mouse away from my
> focus (e.g., insertion point), do the scrolling, and then return to the
> working
> focus.
> 
> While wheel mice (or extra modes such as: press middle mouse button once =>
> mouse movement adjusts scroll position => press middle mouse button again =>
> mouse movement adjusts cursor position again) heavily reduce the need for
> scrollbars they can not replace them because they do not allow absolute
> position, e.g., jump to a location 1/3 before the end of the document, etc.
> 
> Therefore, I propose pressing the middle mouse button (or key + button for
> those one and two eared mice) should pop up a little scrollbar at the current
> mouse position. After manipulating the scrollbar one either leaves it
> somewhere
> or makes it go away with the same (key + ) mouse button.
> 
> In order to minimize the obstruction caused by the popped up scroll bar, most
> parts of it can be drawn with quite translucent colors.
> 
> I can not realize that idea because I should be preparing a course (starting
> next week) instead of writing emails, but maybe someone else likes the idea
> and
> takes a stab.
> If that proved to be a sufficient and superior scrolling technique one could
> get rid of all the scrollbar variants and preferences existing at present.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>     Thomas
> 
> --
> Dr. Thomas Kuehne
> +49 178 4314387, http://www-agce.informatik.uni-kl.de/~kuehne
> Seemingly difficult answers are simply waiting for someone
> to ask the right questions. -- TK
> 
> 
> 


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