139822 - Hidden/Visible vertical scrollbar causes similar pages to be offset/thinner

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 72540

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[BugZilla User]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020417
BuildID:    2002041711

the site shown is very simple; 7 pages.  i noticed a difference between NS4.79/IE5.5 and mozilla that threw me until i realized what it was.

while clicking between the pages i noticed on 2 of them (home and safety), the page would be rendered slightly to the right of where it is on the other 5 pages.  i spent a little while trying to figure out what i had done wrong; all the pages were created on the same template.  the upshot is that it appared two of the pages weren't consistent.  (it was most noticable when the pages loaded fast--browsing locally or using broadband).

i then realized it was the two pages that don't exceed the browser height (btw, i'm at 1600x1200).  the 5 pages that DO exceed browser height cause a scroll bar to appear, pushing everything over to the left 10 pixels or so.

i then checked NS4.79 (which you may just woo me from yet:), and while it doesn't have a scroll bar on the two short pages, when it renders them it acts as if it was there (there's no placement difference).

in IE5.5, the scrollbar is always there, it's just greyed out if the page doesn't exceed the length of the browser.

i don't know if this is intentional.  just figured i'd report it, since it gave the appearance of a site inconsistancy to me.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.surf the page, clicking on the different links
2.note the page placement difference between the home/safety pages and the rest of the pages
3.

Actual Results:  what i described

Expected Results:  rendered in the exact same location, as NS4.79 does :)

Comment 1

[Adam Lock]

I'm reassigning this bug to Browser-General.

Judging from the description, I reckon the real issue is that scrollbar
autohiding can shift stuff around and makes the content area thinner. For
similar content like this has a minor visual impact.

Personally I prefer the existing behaviour though there could be a usability
argument for leaving the vertical scrollbar visible even when it isn't needed.

Comment 2

[Christian Schmidt]

The discussion whether the vertical scrollbar should always be visible takes
place in bug 72540. Marking DUPLICATE.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 72540 ***