60978 - hand/grabber mode to scroll

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 133054

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Kathleen :Brade]

The following comment/request comes from Bill Connell on 11/15/2000 at
http://www.macintouch.com/netscape6.html:

One big thing i like about IE is the shortcut of using a 'grabber hand' to move
the page up and down, and Netscape 6 doesn't have that.

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Yeah, I saw that too -- but wouldn't pan-scrolling (as used in Windows) be even 
better? Unlike drag-scrolling, pan-scrolling doesn't require you to repeat the 
same drag action over and over.

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

shouldn't this go over to toolkit? just wondering...

Comment 3

[Peter Trudelle]

I think xpapps may be correct for this.  MPT: we already have scrolling methods
that don't require the gesture to be repeated, but I think people really like
the ease with which they can scroll pages using the hand - it is a very natural
gesture.  I don't know what you mean by 'pan-scrolling'.

Comment 4

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Pan-scrolling is where you middle-click (the Mac OS equivalent would be
Command+click) on a place other than a link, and you get a little compass graphic 
on the screen which you can move the cursor away from to scroll the document, 
with the speed of the scrolling being proportional to the distance of the cursor 
from the graphic. (See the `Panning' section of
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/books/winguide/ch06d.htm>.)

In contrast, drag-scrolling requires you to move to one edge of the viewport, 
drag to the opposite edge, lift the mousebutton, move all the way back to the 
first edge, and repeat ad nauseum. Sure, it's a natural gesture in the real 
world, but -- like the Quicktime 4.0 Player's circular volume knob -- it is 
really inappropriate for a pointing device interface.

Comment 5

[Peter Trudelle]

Oh, okay, I think I've seen that somewhere before. It is nice, but seems to be
completely undiscoverable. I still think the grabber hand would be the sweet
spot here, it is entirely suitable for modest adjustments to the scrolled view.
 Larger adjustments are handled fine by dragging the thumb or using PgUp et. al
BTW, I think the QT volume knob fails mainly because it offers a rotational
affordance when users have only a linear input device.

Comment 6

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

I think pan-scrolling is a wonderful thing, and would like to see it in Mozilla. 
As long as you change the cursor to the grab-hand when the appropriate keys are 
down, I think it's discoverable enough.

w.r.t the QuickTime volume knob, I think that the issue of it being a rotational 
control which you are trying to control with a linear device is somewhat bogus. 
If, like me, you "roll" your finger over such a knob on a real device (e.g. the 
volume control on a clock-radio type thing), then your input is pretty linear. In 
the same way, grabbing the edge of the virtual wheel, and mousing straight up or 
down works fine. But this is off-topic...

Comment 7

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

Since Don has left, Vishy is taking his bugs in bulk, pending reassignment.
thanks,
	Vishy

Comment 8

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Oh, pan-scrolling is bug 22775. To have both pan-scrolling and drag scrolling 
would be overkill, IMO.

(Drag scrolling requires the same action to be repeated several times in order to 
get to the other end of the document. The QT 4.0 Player volume knob doesn't 
require this -- you can drag beyond the visible edge of the knob -- but it
*looks* like it does. So in effect, they have the same UI problem.)

Comment 9

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 34236 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Paul Chen]

nav triage team:

Nice to have, but don't think we'll get to it for beta1, marking nsbeta1-

Comment 11

[risto.kankkunen]

I don't think grabber would be overkill, it nicely complements autoscroll and
panning. Grabber is great for small and precise adjustments, the others for
quick long-range scrolling.

Comment 12

[Chris McAfee]

UI feature request, over to ben who should push this off to post-1.0

Comment 13

[Paul Chen]

Marking nsbeta1- bugs as future to get off the radar

Comment 14

[lancer]

IMO, this must hide the scrollbars or to be accompanied with that option.

Comment 15

[David Filskov]

A new totally idea! - even better that pan-scrolling (easier to control):

When dragging the page around with the dragger hand, let the window height/width correspond to the total web page height/width, so that it is always possible to see all the web page moving the dragger hand around in one stroke inside the window area.

Similar to a reversed scroll bar, only more logical and not "out of reach" way out right and not taking up any space.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 133054 picks up the conversation where this one ended.
(dupping)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 133054 ***