709456 - consider implementing desktop like scroll bars

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P5)

Description

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

We should consider adding desktop like draggable scroll bars on thr screen edges when the user tries to scroll with above a certain velocity.

Comment 1

[Andrew M.]

As a user, I'll second this motion.

I was using Firefox for Android (fennec) version 30 and had installed the "Scroll To Top Mobile 1.1" Add-On. That handled the worst case quite well; when you're at the bottom of a long page and want to access a link that is only at the top of the page. The Scroll-To-Top Add-on puts a big upwards arrow at the bottom right corner of the screen, which you only have to touch once to scroll to the top.
Everything was fine.

As fennec version 30 was getting old, I uninstalled it and installed fennec version 36 a few weeks ago, and reinstalled Scroll To Top from the add-on market.
Suddenly the scroll-to-top Add-on doesn't work any more, it never displays.
And even in v36 Mozilla still haven't implemented a scrollbar, unlike other mobile browsers.
I tried version 32 and 34 too, but the Scroll-to-Top Add-on doesn't work in those versions either.
Things are not fine any more.

So you need some marketing information to determine what type of trade-off between maximising horizontal content space and rapid scrolling ability is preferable to most users. You may then want to make the trade-off individualised by a selectable option in browser settings.

Personally I think Alex's suggestion is a good idea, I had the same idea a few weeks ago when this problem first arose for me. If the person is frantically scrolling upwards at more than 3 "screenfulls" per second for two seconds, then make a big thumb-sized vertical scroll bar appear hovering over all other page content. This won't be accurate enough to precisely position the view in the page, but it's a quicker way to get "near enough" and then go back to normal swiping to precisely find the target content.

If a scrollbar is in the too-hard basket then, as I said, even an instant Scroll To Top feature would bring welcome relief in the worst case scenario.

Now why am I commenting on a 3+ year old bug? Because I wanted to search Bugzilla for extant suggestions the same as mine before opening a new bug. Turns out numerous other people have asked for a scroll bar or a quick way to scroll to the top, and yet there is still no feature in fennec that does this. 
 * Bug 729846 also requested a way to scroll to top "in one action", but this was erroneously marked as a duplicate of an older request (bug 708765) to add faster two-finger seeking. If the reporter changed their mind about what they wanted (or would settle for), that bug should have been closed but NOT marked as a duplicate.
 * Similarly, Bug 793449 asked for a "quick" way to scroll to top, and was also erroneously closed as a duplicate of bug 708765, which still takes numerous repetitive flicking non-stop for 15+ seconds to get to the top of typical blog comment pages (with eg ~140 comments), so it is not a "quick" solution to 793449.

So even though this ticket, bug 709456, is over 3 years old, it's the first open ticket I could find that asks for what I want in fennec: a scroll bar.

TL;DR: Do what Alex said.

Comment 3

[cousteau]

Several apps do this.  Apparently there's an option in Android to do this, `android:fastScrollEnabled="true"`.  I'm not a developer and haven't tried this myself though.

Comment 4

[BMO Automation]

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