Miserable Battery Life on 2016 MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro 460 - <AUTHOR> http://eatupmartha.com/2016/12/12/miserable-battery-with-the-new-mbp-with-radeon-460 <comment><USER2> The 2016 MacBook Pro (15-inch) has a 76.0-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery. The AMD Radeon Pro 460 has a TDP of 35W and will have to run at close to full power to fill a Retina display's 5 million pixels at reasonable frame rates (running with less-than-optimal OpenGL drivers; Civ VI doesn't support Apple's "Metal"). The 2.6Ghz "Skylake" i7 (i7-6700HQ) has a TDP of 45W that won't be maxed, but there's also display backlight, WiFi and some other stuff to be powered. So yeah, one hour seems reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER3> At this point it seems "My MBP 15" has sucky battery life" or "The new MBP sucks!" is a karma gold mine -- I actually own a tbMBP 15" and haven't had any battery nor functionality issues with it. It's an all day programming device for me and suits that purpose very well.

<comment><USER4> I'm just using vim and spotify and get like 4 hours of battery life. I really do think some MBP's have faulty batteries and it's not a software issue. My 13" 2014 MBP gives me 7+ hours under the same workload.

<comment><USER3> Do an exchange. I program using eclipse and get all day battery life.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but I'm not a masochist :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [jaw hits floor] I'd like to see a timelampse of this. It's not that I don't trust you, but I find it hard to believe that a new battery could safely discharge that quickly. Also, for your next test, keep playing until your machine fully dies. Maybe the low battery warning is faulty. Worth as shot.

<comment><USER6> I can corroborate; I have the new 15", 2.6Ghz version and spent the weekend before last playing Civ while travelling. With the brightness settings on low, native resolution and all game settings on low, it took 1 hour and 26 minutes for it to go from 100% to shutting itself off.

I was just as surprised as you are. The laptop got uncomfortably hot as well. I was very disappointed and had to purchase an inverter on the road to use my adapter.

<comment><USER7> This is nothing new though... Every laptop I've owned (including many PowerBooks and MacBook Pros) has gotten about 1-2 hours when playing a game that maxed the GPU and CPU. How does a ~80-100Watt hour battery get more than 1-2 hours of running a ~40-50W CPU and 30-40W GPU? Physics says no.

<comment><USER6> I'd be more inclined to agree with you, if my last MacBook has compatible performance. I got easily double the playtime out of my MacBook Pro Retina.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's pretty typical for windows laptops when you play games. Or at least it used to be. Still not good though.

</comment><comment><USER9> While of course there needs to be a review about a possible bug in the software/hardware implementation of the new MacBook Pros, one just needs to divide the battery capacity of the machine by its TDP to get a lower bound for the battery life - so one hour is not off for a machine as powerful as the MacBook Pro. I am using the 2015 version. It has a larger battery - 99 Wh, but still, depending on the software, I can use it up in 1-2 hours easily. Of course, on less taxing loads I do get around the advertised run times.

</comment><comment><USER10> So then the trade-off seems to be, don't use all of the hardware you paid for, and the battery will last for a while, or use all of it and it will die out in an hour. Its weird to have such an extreme tradeoff for a pro device that's meant to be used as such. How long before the OS throttles the CPU like a mobile OS when you use "too much" CPU?

<comment><USER11> If only these Macbooks came with a dongle to connect to some source of electricity! But nooo – Apple just had to remove this "MagSafe" connector! I have no idea how they can call this a "Pro"! I've been in this business for a long time, and I know very many very professional professionals, and they are all moving to Linux to play Civ VI.

<comment><USER10> But we're beyond wires now. Moving away from wired headphones, certainly no wired ethernet because that's only for those filthy non-professionals, I figure they would have designed it so you can squeeze 3 hours out of it like the competition. But maybe they want us professionals to take more breaks, because we're working too hard, because you know.. we're professionals using a professional device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unless several other games exhibit this issue, I'd consider this to be an issue with Civ VI.

I'd bet that this same program eats the battery of any Mac, hence it being a Civ issue, not a Mac issue.

Call me on this if I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER13> So what's the battery life like on the same test with the last gen MBP?

<comment><USER14> My 15" 2013 with discrete graphics has 95Whr battery but can't run civ VI on a decent frame rate without going into strategic view (which reduces graphics load somewhat). In that mode I've been able to get ~ 2 hours maybe just a hair under the last time I tried it on a flight.</comment></comment>


After governance breakdown, Node.js leaders fight for its survival - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/after-governance-breakdown-node-js-leaders-fight-for-its-survival/ <comment><USER2> > The resignations followed a single event -- a vote that failed to remove a > former director, a longstanding member of the community, from the leadership > group.

This post (without taking sides, I haven't even read his post yet) is that individual's defence of himself, which doesn't appear to be linked from this post:

[https://medium.com/@rvagg/the-truth-about-rod- vagg-f063f6a53...](https://medium.com/@rvagg/the-truth-about-rod- vagg-f063f6a53557)

<comment><USER3> This is pure fun:

"Some time ago I received notification via email that there are complaints against me. No details were provided and I was informed that I would neither receive those details or be involved in the whatever process was to take place. Further, TSC members were not allowed to speak to me directly about these matters, including my work colleagues also on the TSC."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "What did Vagg actually do?"

The fact that we can't get any answer on this beyond Vagg's side is frustrating. From reading his side, it all seems incredibly minor stuff that would in no way need to end with a leadership change.

Can someone in the Node.js community enumerate the complaints fully, here or in some public place?

</comment><comment><USER5> So - and please forgive the tone - when they couldn't get their way by the rules they put in place, they decided to pick up their toys and go home?

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain what happened? The article did a very poor job at it (or, at least, I didn't understand it), as it seemed to contradict itself or not shed enough light on things.

What did Vagg actually do? Why did other members leave?

<comment><USER7> I've heard he refused to use gender neutral pronouns.

<comment><USER8> Where did you hear this? Is there a source?

<comment><USER7> Could even have been Hacker News, when the same question was asked. Or maybe Twitter. I must admit I don't remember exactly. It is just what I said: "I heard" \- no more, no less.

If I don't provide sources, and the accusers don't provide sources, who should we believe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who profits from this?

I mean this seems like a campaign to crush the node leadership, someone wants to get power over node, but who?

<comment><USER10> NPM wouldn't mind.

<comment><USER9> Could you elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where can I find a list or overview reference for the events that happened? I'm completely out of the loop as I don't use Node.js at all.

Also, are there backup(s) anywhere for the " _Many [...] complaints, since removed from the committee 's pages_"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Another project bites the dust. Let the game of thrones commence!</comment>


Court: Breaking Your Employer's Computer Policy Isn't a Crime - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/federal-court-appeals-rejects-notion-violating-your-employers-computer-use <comment><USER2> > A court should not uphold a highly problematic interpretation of a statute > merely because the Government promises to use it responsibly.

This. Whether a law is just needs to be considered in light of its worst-case abuse potential, not just on the basis of how it is currently being applied. It is a great advantage of the common law system that over-broad, ill- specified or otherwise broken laws can be remedied through precedent, however the responsibility still lies with the government to make laws that are well- considered, based on sound principles and not overly broad.

<comment><USER3> Could you extrapolate from that though that:

1\. Since the first amendment allows the free exercise of religion, prayer must be allowed in schools as long as no specific religion is established via those prayers?

2\. Since the second amendment allows the right to keep and bear arms, without further amendment, that right should be unrestricted by any registration process considered onerous or restrictive?

<comment><USER4> 2a. "...well-regulated..."

<comment><USER5> At the time when it was written, "well-regulated" did not mean lots of oversight by the government. It meant something closer to "properly functioning". I.e.: armed and trained sufficiently.

<comment><USER6> Well, we've got the armed part down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Valle was also charged with violating the CFAA for accessing a police database to look up information about people without a valid law enforcement purpose, in violation of NYPD policy."

I find it odd that the prosecutors decided to go with a computer fraud charge for this crime, aren't there any laws that would prohibit this action regardless of method used? If he chose to lookup paper files on unrelated people, would he be immune to prosecution?

<comment><USER8> I thought the CFAA, like the UK equivalent Computer Misuse Act 1990, governed unauthorised access to computer systems and data. Seems appropriate to me.

Paper files would probably be locked up - the equivalent prosecution would then be something like trespass, breaking and entering, or what have you.

If you have access to data for operational purposes then access outside of operational needs is just unauthorised access which on computer systems is an offence in itself because physical access is already historically covered under various laws.

<comment><USER9> > Paper files would probably be locked up - the equivalent prosecution would > then be something like trespass, breaking and entering, or what have you.

You're making the right analogy but then the analogous thing has the same problem. The bad thing isn't trespassing, the bad thing is misusing police records. Trespassing or B&E doesn't fit at all, because he is legitimately allowed to be there (which is what that crime prohibits) and even to have that information, but isn't allowed to use the information for that purpose, which is something else entirely.

The penalty for trespassing is also the wrong one because misusing police records is worse than trespassing. So if trespassing is the worst you can charge then you end up either having to make the penalty for trespassing far too severe for most other instances of trespassing, or the effective penalty for misusing police records would be too lenient.

Which is why we need laws against specific things with penalties appropriate to the crime, rather than one overly broad law with severe penalties that effectively says don't do anything you aren't supposed to do.

<comment><USER10> > You're making the right analogy but then the analogous thing has the same > problem. The bad thing isn't trespassing, the bad thing is misusing police > records. Trespassing or B&E doesn't fit at all, because he is legitimately > allowed to be there (which is what that crime prohibits) and even to have > that information, but isn't allowed to use the information for that purpose, > which is something else entirely.

Exactly - though in most cases being fired from your position would be appropriate and the end of the story (unless there were actual people whom were harmed or material damages involved). In particular I think the comments/judgements regarding this issue are subconsciously harsher due to the subject matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The court also ruled that the government cannot hold people criminally > liable on the basis of purely fantastical statements they make online—i.e., > thoughtcrime.

I think this is the bigger news here.

</comment><comment><USER12> I almost think the entire EFF should receive the civilian equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Amazing work and gratz to all those involved!

<comment><USER13> Vote with your wallet, make a donation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the people who skipped the article and assumed that the case was about some stupid office policy:

> Valle was also charged with violating the CFAA for accessing a police > database to look up information about people without a valid law enforcement > purpose, in violation of NYPD policy.

This is not a typical "employer policy". This a policy about access to sensitive private data that is only available to the government. Wouldn't you want improper access to such data punished?

<comment><USER15> He was apparently fired for violating his terms of employment, so he was punished, but not _criminally_ punished. While I am very disturbed that a major restraint (the threat of _criminal_ prosecution) has been taken off the table for abuse of sensitive private government data, I'm happy that it has been taken off the table for me as well, as a non-government employee that only has access to sensitive _company_ private data.

Quote from the appeals court ruling: "Valle concedes that he violated the terms of his employment by putting his authorized computer access to personal use..."

Ref: <[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/repugnant- online-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/repugnant-online- discussions-are-not-illegal-thoughtcrime-court-rules/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In general, that's probably the right decision. But I also think that using police records for personal purposes is different from browsing Facebook at work.

One only damages the employer slightly, the other has huge potential issues against society at large. The CFAA is not the correct solution for this issue, but none the less, I think such behavior should be a criminal matter.

<comment><USER17> Its gross misconduct and in the uk Malfeasance in office (surely there is an equivalent law in the USA.

And doesn't the US equivalent of the official secrets act apply to all police officers?

<comment><USER18> Doesn't the UK Official Secrets Act apply to matters of national security? The closest U.S. equivalent is the Espionage Act of 1917. Records from a city's criminal database are not national security secrets.

<comment><USER17> The OS act applies to a lot of things all list X organisations for example and in the UK all police answer to the home secretary.

All police and civilian police workers are vetted and access to Police databases etc is covered by the OS act.

Even access to say BT's databases that track phone numbers and circuits is covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Still down, heres a cached version [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bj2aVsY...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bj2aVsY9v94J:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/federal- court-appeals-rejects-notion-violating-your-employers-computer- use+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

<comment><USER20> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not a lawyer by any means but in CA I'm completely aware of an employer clause in subsection H of 502c that obviously excludes these acts performed within the scope of employment, as long as there wasn't real damage as an outcome. I don't have a copy of the CFAA but I'm assuming it does as well. Interesting that there was dissent to begin with...

[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=484-502.9)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is awesome piece of work - massive kudos to the EFF!

In true authoritarian tradition, the establishment took an unsympathetic example (on the surface, this defendant is a hard one to explain to the common person) and used it to push through some scary interpretations into case law that would affect a much broader (and more mainstream) group.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mh I'm getting a 403 from Germany for the whole domain. downforeveryoneorjustme says it's up. Could someone paste the content for me?

<comment><USER23> Same for me, and it worked fine maybe an hour ago. Server issue it seems.

<comment><USER24> Probably: working now from Germany

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The topic is interesting, but I would rather read an intelligent synopsis with comments on the implications than try to read the court opinion on my own without any input from those properly trained in the law.

(Linking to the actual decision IN ADDITION to some expert analysis would be a great idea.)

<comment><USER26> Good point, here's the Gizmodo article about it: [http://gizmodo.com/court- rules-that-breaking-your-employers-...](http://gizmodo.com/court-rules-that- breaking-your-employers-computer-polic-1746133150)

In short: _The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an opinion rejecting the government's attempt to hold an employee criminally liable under the federal hacking statute—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA")—for violating his employer-imposed computer use restrictions... The court also ruled that the government cannot hold people criminally liable on the basis of purely fantastical statements they make online—i.e., thoughtcrime._

<comment><USER27> From the gizmodo article:

 _Valle was also charged with violating the CFAA for accessing a police database to look up information about people without a valid law enforcement purpose, in violation of NYPD policy._

Querying a government database for personal use is a serious offense. I hope the court would address it separately from lesser rules such as "don't use Facebook at work."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How might this court have handled the Aaron Swartz case? I don't know the facts of either case well enough to tell whether they're comparable.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've seen other places in this thread indicating that charging this guy under the CFAA was an inappropriate choice (i.e. not just the _only_ choice if they want to pursue criminal charges); does anyone know if there have been similar cases of abuse of law enforcement data where the accused was charged under a different statute?

</comment><comment><USER30> The efforts of the EFF are to be lauded in this case.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great news !

</comment><comment><USER32> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675396)

<comment><USER33> Re-submitting something is fine if it hasn't been submitted to often and previous submissions didn't spawn discussions. Linking to empty discussions isn't useful.

<comment><USER32> Re-submitting it in under a day isn't useful either.</comment></comment></comment>


Active Mutual Funds are Going to Die - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clarityspring.com/2011/08/active-mutual-funds-are-going-to-die.html

<comment><USER2> I generally agree with the author, mutual funds aren't smart investments anymore. I think the ease and cost of stock purchasing now also plays a role. The Internet and discount brokers make it easy for everyone and provide options that simply didn't exist before.

Investing is still very scary for most and because of the marketing machine most feel mutual funds are the safe investment. The Internet and availability of information is breaking that barrier but it will take time.

For the record I first invested in mutual funds but have learned the ways and now am completely self invested with a discount broker in dividend paying stocks.</comment>


Introducing Stack Overflow Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/07/introducing-stack-overflow-documentation-beta/ <comment><USER2> Duplicated posts? I guess this could be merged with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135840) \- both are presently on the front-page :|

<comment><USER3> Sure. Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135840).</comment></comment>


Dean Says Median Grade at Harvard College Is A-, Most Common Grade Is A - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-mode-a/

<comment><USER2> The problem is that grading serves two purposes that are at odds with each other: comparison within a group and comparison between groups.

Harvard's grading system is useless to a student that is trying to figure out how they are ranking among their peers or whether their studying habits are increasing their performance. However, it's great when they're on the job market and their 4.0 GPA is better than the 2.9 GPA of Engineering State that still grades on a sharp curve.

The increase in grade inflation has reflected the trend of college goers valuing extrinsic factors (get a better job) over intrinsic factors (learn more stuff).

A solution to this problem would be to split the two grading systems apart, having one standardized, SAT style test at the end of college that would allow more accurate comparisons between schools while preserving GPA as a within school measure.

In fact, it stuns me that the College Board hasn't positioned the GRE as this kind of service and pioneered some kind of aGPA score that would combine your college GPA with the relative performance of your college against all others.

<comment><USER3> I went to ETH Zurich, Switzerland for both my BSc and MSc degrees.

The undergrad program that leads up to the BSc degree is ridiculously easy to get into (Swiss nationals even have to be accepted into the program by law AFAIK -- I'm not Swiss) but the first year of that program is so absolutely horrendously hard to survive (one massive set of 10 or so finals at the end of year 1) that you literally come out of your first year with five kilos off the scale and pale like a ghost (I'm Caucasian ... ?).

At any rate, point being at ETH Zurich in particular and other European unis in general (again AFAIK) the goal is to survive and get your degree whichever way you can.

Grade inflation at "top notch" American unis with their laughable grading standards, the constant availability of extra credit to push up your final grade at will, and the weird financial and social hurdles that applicants are presented with utterly confuse me.

Speaking of which, tuition fees at ETH Zurich were 750 CHF per year (830 USD).

<comment><USER4> Top notch American universities have ridiculously easy grading standards because the filtering happens at the admissions stage. Harvard's undergrad has something like a 5-6% acceptance rate. Admission requires being on the ball since age 14 so you can apply with a perfect high school GPA, getting at least in the 98th percentile on the SATs, and doing a bunch of extracurricular and service projects while maintaining that perfect GPA.

After that, the fact of whether you're smart and hard working is presumed. The grade inflation exists to make college a fun experience where you can try out different sorts of classes without prejudicing your chances at jobs and graduate school later.

<comment><USER5> I have always found it amusing that the virtue of hard work is bestowed on kids who make it into the most selective American colleges. Another way to look at it is that, it is precisely hard work that these kids(or at least their parents on their behalf)are trying to avoid.

In other words while the rest of us will have to slug it hard until the moment of death (quite literally for many), once you enter a school like Harvard it's all gravy for the rest of your life. Basically put in about five years of hard work to get into Harvard and live a cushy life from then on, sweet deal indeed.

I have meet people who went to Harvard and the kind of accommodation they get is mind blowing to a state-school Joe like me. I dated a girl who was interning in DC a couple years back from Harvard law school, she had the whole summer to turn in what was a five page paper. Mean while I had to write 10+ page papers practically every week in b-school at a public school and if I missed the due date, the penalty can be anything from losing some points to getting no points.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Harvard grads tend to autopilot the rest of their lives. That said, one of the purposes of going to Harvard is to avoid risk. Harvard students tend to come from the upper middle class (but not from "fuck you" money), and going to Harvard helps minimize the risk of falling out of that class. Hence the popularity of banking, consulting, federal government, etc, among Harvard undergraduates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My experience was that it's relatively easy to stack rank Harvard undergraduates, but it often doesn't feel like it serves any educational purpose to do so.

In the class I taught of 12, there were 10 that seemed like they deserved an A or A-. They completed all the assignments and did their absolute best as far as I could tell. Some were definitely better than others (A vs. A-), but giving the hardworking but not genius students Bs just made them stressed out. They would come to office hours to ask how they could improve. The only true answer I could give was "there are 2-3 students in this class that are just incredibly creative and gifted writers, they get the As."

Maybe it's the role of a teacher to stack rank students, but it's no fun. I'd much prefer to try to get the best out of each student. The truly top students are going to have no problem distinguishing themselves later in life anyway, it's just so obvious how good they are.

<comment><USER7> Stack ranking in small groups is stupid and counterproductive because it forces a distribution where none necessarily exists. So for any particular class of 12 I agree with you.

However, Harvard enrolls over 1500 frosh next year. Is there really so little daylight between them that they should all get an A or A-? Graduation is supposed to ensure the minimum fulfillment of standards, GPA is for ranking. Given that you're seeing kids on the far end of the tail, I would expect more variance, not less.

Let's be honest here: grade inflation is not something we do for a reason, but rather something that happens because no one has any particular interest in preventing it.

Full disclosure: I attended a demanding college whose 2007 median GPA was 3.35 (the average was less). Of the 150-ish annual graduates, only 7 have ever achieved a 4.0 since its founding in 1955.

<comment><USER6> The overall GPA can still be used to rank, even at Harvard. The latin honors are fixed at top 5, 20, and 50 percent of graduating classes.

I don't really care about grade inflation overall because I don't think more competition for grades would improve Harvard as an educational institution.

I do think grading norms/curves may be important to standardize the distribution across majors. It's absolutely the case that some students avoid difficult courses. This is very unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I go to Yale where the average GPA is a 3.6. So we suffer from a similar "problem." But honestly, I do not think it _is_ a problem. Kids here put an absurd amount of work into their classes. It's not surprising that the average GPA is a 3.6, because the average assignment actually is A- level work. The obvious argument against this is that the grades should be curved so that the average level of work receives a C... but what do you do when most kids are getting the same top grades on tests, or writing the same high quality papers? It's a hard problem to solve, and as long as other colleges have grade inflation, it would be disadvantageous to your students to not have it.

The problem I have is differing GPA distributions between majors. History majors have a much easier time getting in the 3.6-4.0 range than CS majors, because history teachers will rarely give anything less than a B. So when a CS major applies to jobs that other majors are also applying to (say, finance), he can look bad in comparison.

<comment><USER9> No one gives a shit about GPA in the real world.

<comment><USER8> Right, and then there's this. But employers do give a shit about GPA when recruiting college seniors, because it represents one of the only available metrics for quality of work. In my experience, providing employers with other metrics reduces the value they place on GPA.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps schools should adopt the IIHS ratings scale: Good, Acceptable, Marginal, Poor. Doing away with letter grades that have strong historical bias and cultural signaling might be useful.

Example: [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/toyota/4runner](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/toyota/4runner)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Grade inflation stepped up a notch during the Vietnam War, when professions were reluctant to fail students out of college an into the draft. Now it's done to protect a college's graduation rate, which affects rankings.

Elite Ivy League institutions admit bright, motivated high school graduates and produce bright, motivated college graduates. The institution's value add is mainly networking and branding--kind of like YC.

<comment><USER12> It's also due to the fact that easier grading brings more positive student evaluations of profs, which are taken into account with salaries and tenureship.

<comment><USER13> I assure you that at a Research I university like Harvard, student evaluations have _at best_ a pro-forma impact on tenureship, and probably salary as well. Faculty at Harvard are tenured and compensated on their abilities to publish high profile research and attract major grants, showing up to lectures is about all that is expected of them teaching-wise.

<comment><USER14> Maybe Harvard. But I am employed as a math professor at a Research I state school, in which context you are quite mistaken. Research is most important, but good teaching is also important.

"Universities don't care about teaching" is a fun meme to kick around, and there are anecdotes to support this, but by and large it is not true.

<comment><USER13> My comment was directed more specifically to Harvard and narrow set of top tier schools, I do not believe that universities don't care about teaching. The list of "very high research activity" (apparently research 1 is no longer used) includes 108 schools [1] of which Harvard is at one extreme end.

That said, my father recently retired after 33 years with his department at a "high research activity", the second tier, and he can't recall a single case when someone was denied tenure where teaching performance was an issue. Research, and increasingly grant acquisition were always the issues.

Personally, I went to a small liberal arts school. Having taught at two top universities, private and public, I'm happy I went where I did. Undergrad teaching was the top priority and the difference is stark.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always hated this about other schools. While I will be the first to admit that I could probably have tried harder in school, I blame this practice in Ontario for part of why I could never get an interview for medical school. Waterloo engineering was definitely one of the tougher programs, and an 80 average was actually tough to attain. It seems that my friends at other schools or programs had an easier time getting 80s and 90s.

<comment><USER16> PhD programs are well aware of grade inflation at different universities and take this into account when conducting admissions. No idea if med schools do the same but I'd be surprised if they didn't. Your difficulty getting into med school could also have been because engineering not a typical "pre-med" degree.

<comment><USER15> Medical schools specifically stated that they did not adjust grades. There was some different weighting mechanisms employed for certain schools, but that was at the school level, not program level.

Furthermore, medical schools here typically encourage students _not_ to pursue "pre-med" degrees. They want students that pursue challenging programs, in order to demonstrate their abilities and to have a backup if medical school doesn't work out.

I don't have any regrets about engineering, it's the best decision I ever made, and I'm sure I'll have an impact in other ways. It's just still a bitter/sore spot for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I taught an upper-level undergraduate course in math (combinatorics) at Stanford a few years ago. There were 18 students, and I gave all of them A's or B's.

They deserved it. I was inspired by what they accomplished. I would have felt uncomfortable if I had been asked to make sure the average was around a C. (And all of this is very typical of the experience of people teaching math at Stanford.)

<comment><USER17> That's all well and good, but the whole point of a scale is that students fall somewhere on it and it reflects work done in comparison to something. If not other students, then just patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Would you need a some slacker half-following directions to earn an Average? No, you'd need the Average of the students in the course to earn an Average. Otherwise the distinction is meaningless.

Then again, I've just spent some time re-reading Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective people, and I've given up caring too much about grades per- se. They discourage cooperation and encourage competition amongst peers. And in doing that strongly bias their adherents to win-lose scenarios when we should all strive for win-win scenarios.

If you think that's bunk, I encourage you to read Covey's book. Coming at it with an open-mind can truly be life-changing in a positive way.

<comment><USER18> > If not other students, then just patting ourselves on the back for a job > well done.

Or, for the win-win version, how about an objective measure of correct answers/solutions. Grade inflation never bothered me in math and computer science courses, because what were they going to do when the students knew the material? Make 1 point the difference between a A and an C? I remember a midterm where a professor did exactly that (forced a grade-lowering curve on a group that had earned mostly 19 or 20 out of 20). It just didn't really work... A few kids even dropped the course, despite the fact that they basically knew all of the material (and had slipped up on only one or two answers).

Of course, they could just make the material impossibly hard so that only 2-3 students could get the A (after weeks of all-nighters and likely trading off good grades in other courses) but to me that is counterproductive to the whole reason the students are there -- to learn!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Old joke: What do you call a guy who gets straight C-minuses at Harvard?

A Harvard Graduate.

Harvard is effectively graded pass/fail. I'm not convinced that's actually a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I never understood the complaints about grade inflation at top schools. The people who care to make distinctions among graduates at Harvard (investment banks, consulting companies, graduate schools), already know how to do so. Everyone else just cares about the "Harvard" on the resume. So who cares what the median grade is? They could hand out degrees "magna cum fruitcake" and nobody would blink.

<comment><USER20> I went to a liberal arts college that didn't do grade inflation. The average grade was nominally a C. The campus bookstore sold t-shirts with "C+: Better than average!" on them. Oh, and our diplomas are comically large :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to imagine that the long-term solution for this is for employers to find better criteria to judge candidates on than a GPA. There's too much variance in schools and classes to really consider it an accurate judge of ability. It's a measure of how well you did in school, not how well you will be able to do your job.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am convinced the best way to deal with classes is to make failing a non- factor, i.e. if you fail a class, it doesn't affect anything, and no one really "knows" outside of your school. Then, make all classes graded on a pass-fail basis, perhaps with a professor's ability to note that a few students went above and beyond expectations.

This way, you can actually say "This person knows x and is capable of doing y at z standards. See, they passed the course that required you to do all that." And you don't end up with weird situations like the "gentleman's" C, where you've passed a course but gained next to nothing from it. If you've passed an intro physics course with a C, what does that mean? Can you calculate vector forces? Or are your diagrams sometimes OK looking, but you can't crunch numbers?

</comment><comment><USER23> So a 4.0 at Harvard is equivalent to a 2.0 at a community college. Niiiiice!

<comment><USER24> In high school I took number theory at the local community college. We stopped right before the chapter on quadratic reciprocity. Later, I found the Harvard midterm for their undergrad number theory class online. I took a look out of curiosity. The first question was on quadratic reciprocity, and I had no clue what the other 9 (or 14, maybe) were about. They were moving >2x as fast and doing 3x as much homework (the homework was online too).

I suspect the worst student in the Harvard class would have been competitive with the best student in the CC class. If 20% of the kids in the CC class get As, it's not a stretch to believe that 100% of the Harvard kids would have gotten As had they taken the same class.

Obviously this holds for some classes more than others, but the point is that variation in difficulty between classes, professors, and peer-groups can easily dominate variation in difficulty imposed by the grading scale.

<comment><USER23> You're saying, then, that a 4.0 at a community college is not even a 2.0 at Harvard? But how could it be? It's the opposite! 4 > 2! Those universities are trying to redefine numbers... Or maybe it's in the units! Ohhh, now I get it: Given CC=Commmunity College, then 4.0 GPA CC < 2.0 GPA Harvard. This implies: 2.0 GPA CC < 2.0 GPA Harvard. Now we drop 2.0 GPA from both sides and we get CC < Harvard, or Harvard > CC. But wait, is that true for every community college and for every class and for every course at Harvard and at all those community colleges? So maybe it's not 100%, so maybe 4.0 GPA CC > 2.0 GPA Harvard in some cases. so, the answer, as usual, is "it depends".

What does it depend on? It depends on how things are measured.

Woooooooooooo, wait a minute there Sherlock. Harvard is Expensive man! And hard to get into... How can there possibly be cases when Harvard < CC? Since Harvard is so 1337, there's no way that Harvard < CC, right (in some cases)? But then since it's impossible to measure (accurately and without bias) all of the community colleges out there, it's theoretically possible for CC > Harvard, especially when taking into consideration the tuition paid. So, in some cases, (CC+small_tuition) > (Harvard+expensive_tuition), and thus CC > (Harvard + expensive_tuition - small_tuition), so then one could say that CC - expensive_tuition > Harvard - small_tuition in some cases.

So, when you wrote "it's not a stretch to believe that 100% of the Harvard kids would have gotten As had they taken the same class." You're actually trying to disprove that "CC - expensive_tuition > Harvard - small_tuition in some cases", but that can't be, because there's no way to measure all. Thus your statement "it's not a stretch to believe" has to be incorrect (since can't be verified as correct). Anyway, 100% gotten A? Really? Are you a betting man? What if one student had a bad day that day and got an 89?

Be careful making generalizations, man. You can't know until you measure; and then you can't know until many other people have also measured, and then you can't know until many years have passed and nobody had come forward with substantial allegations of study bias in your field of study.

Find those

<comment><USER24> How did this:

> variation in difficulty between classes, professors, and peer-groups can > easily dominate variation in difficulty imposed by the grading scale

Become this:

> 4.0 GPA CC < 2.0 GPA Harvard. This implies: 2.0 GPA CC < 2.0 GPA Harvard. > Now we drop 2.0 GPA from both sides and we get CC < Harvard, or Harvard > > CC. ... Harvard is so 1337, there's no way that Harvard < CC, right (in some > cases)?

And why do you think I'm performing a cost/benefit analysis? I relayed an anecdote about a single class that had to do with course material, not finances or overall GPA comparisons.

> You're actually trying to disprove that "CC - expensive_tuition > Harvard - > small_tuition in some cases"

No.

I'll admit that I made a slightly hyperbolic statement when I made a claim about kids in a class I never attended, but you belabor this point to such excess that I have no trouble calling it "nitpicking."

> Are you a betting man? What if one student had a bad day that day and got an > 89?

Then my conclusion would not change in the slightest.

> Be careful making generalizations, man.

Right back at you. Slight hyperbole is one thing, straw men are another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would imagine there's a significant selection bias at work here. This is not a random sample of students, and I don't think it's super odd that many of them get As.

Perhaps more get As than should, but I'd look at the grade distribution of a less discriminating institution if I wanted to get huffy about grade inflation. Especially with no meaningful data in the article about historic grade distributions at Harvard.

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem is that law (and other professional) schools are incentivized to largely disregard the institution of applicants and instead base most of their admissions decisions on GPA and LSAT so they can get high US News rankings. An elite undergrad institution can best serve it's students by making sure high GPA's are achievable to hard working, smart students who want to go to professional schools.

</comment><comment><USER27> Unless you're planning on applying to grad school, GPA really doesn't really matter for anything after about 6 months out of school.

</comment><comment><USER28> Preferred admission to kids of alumni at top private school. And easy As that will pave way to other grad schools.

I don't want to believe US is a class based society but ...</comment>


Scrollbar Blindness - <AUTHOR> https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness <comment><USER2> I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem.

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when that "feature" came out.

I don't really need the small sliver of menu space in PDF view to be reclaimed -- and for what, a "clean" look? Those are real and important functions I desire. What I actually need is for news and blog sites to stop covering 1/4 of their vertical window space with hovering frames, ads, and banners asking me to subscribe. Which, by the way, subsequently don't properly calculate into that now hidden scroll bar's movement and cause you to overshoot the displayable area when paging down. End rant.

<comment><USER3> _For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren 't adept at discovering hidden features_

You don't even have to be elderly.

The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears.

How did that conversation go?

Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go?

Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or ever think to look for it.

Who thought that was a good idea?

I think people in the SV/HN bubble play the "what about the elderly?" card too often, because we're afraid to admit that we, too, don't know how stuff works anymore.

<comment><USER4> Even worse than undiscoverable features are land mine features, where some subtle gesture triggers a wild and unwanted mode change. Extra credit if the mode change is hard to get out of.

<comment><USER5> There's a windows feature like this which I hate with a passion. If you grab a window and shake it side to side, it minimizes all open windows...

So sometimes I'll grab a window to move to my left monitor, decide instead I want it on the right one, and suddenly everything is gone and I now need to go open every single window one at a time. It even took me months to understand that the shaking was what caused it. I would just sometimes be working and suddenly everything is gone and I had no idea why.

<comment><USER6> That thing is the worst!

      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

set DisallowShaking dword to 1

<comment><USER7> Honest question: where do you discover registry stuff like this?

<comment><USER8> Google "Windows disable shaking".

<comment><USER9> lol, the pinnacle of feature discoverability...

<comment><USER10> Oh yeah. Google to:

\- discover which registry key

\- discover how to craft shit in a game

\- to find where my Android setting is and what the searchterm/keyword for it is.

Without google/duckduckgo 80% of the options in my world would be undiscoverable or take waaaay too much time to figure out.

<comment><USER11> > discover how to craft shit in a game

If you're refering to Minecraft, one of the reasons why Minecraft blew up that much was that it was around at the exact right time in history: when online gaming had become viable and let's-plays were just becoming a thing. Minecraft, as originally intended, is a communal experience where you learn from the friends you're playing with and from sources on the internet. If I had to describe Minecraft in one sentence, it would be "let me show you that cool thing I saw Pewdiepie do last week". The idea has become commonplace in video gaming at this point, but back then it was fairly new.

(That said, opaque game experiences have been successful before, like the original Legend of Zelda. I guess the schoolyard served a similar purpose back then.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)!

Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad.

Example: [https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/](https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/) is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

<comment><USER13> Developers (seemingly a lot of them?) use a touchpad as their primary input device on a regular basis?

I guess this is an example of being in my own bubble, but I can't stand touchpads. I've used the touchpad on MacBook, like, twice in 2 years.

<comment><USER14> I would expect devs who use macbooks to generally use them the same way as the general population generally uses them. I can't think of a plausible reason to suspect that developers specifically might prefer traditional mice.

One demographic I _would_ expect traditional mouse usage from would be gamers. When I play a first person game I always use my trusty old intellimouse. Otherwise, I use the trackpad unless I'm simultaneously using my mechanical keyboard, but if my keyboard had an attached trackpad I'd probably be using that. But mousing in general just isn't a very important to my workflows and trackpads work just as well as mice for nearly all tasks. Arguably they work better for some since you don't have to move your hand far from the laptop's keyboard to use the trackpad, while using a dedicated mouse means taking your hand completely off the keyboard.

<comment><USER15> > I can't think of a plausible reason to suspect that developers specifically > might prefer traditional mice.

I imagine that developers would prefer mice if people who use computers intensively and knowledgeably prefer mice, and I suspect people who use computers intensively and knowledgeably _do_ prefer mice, the same way that I believe we prefer good keyboards and good monitors.

<comment><USER14> I prefer good mice and good trackpads to poor mice and poor trackpads. But trackpads vs mice? Your comment insinuates a that a clear good/bad dichotomy exists here but I don't think that's generally the case. My above comment notes one context where I _do_ believe that's true, but in the general case? For standard desktop interactions? I don't think mice are objectively better. If anything the proximity of a trackpad makes it better, but that's certainly debatable.

<comment><USER16> I feel like a _good_ touchpad (meaning Apple) is superior to most good mice for general desktop usage. What pushes touchpads clearly ahead is when you make good use of multi-touch gestures. Using third-party tools under macOS, about half of my most commonly used keyboard shortcuts can be replaced by gestures that are quicker and easier than reaching for the keyboard. The handful of apps with native multitouch and support for haptic feedback through the touchpad are also really nice.

I still use a mouse for gaming, but I have to replace it every ~3 years because the buttons start to wear out. That has yet to happen to one of my Apple touchpads.

<comment><USER14> I do like and use multi-touch gestures a lot, though I think 'hot corners' and additional mouse buttons could probably fill the same roll for me. My intellimouse (P/N X08-70385) has five buttons and in the past I've mapped those two extras to forward/backward browser commands and it worked pretty well. If you can get your hands on an intellimouse, I highly recommend it; mine is somewhere around 15-20 years old with yellowed plastic but it's still going strong. Best product ever sold by Microsoft imho.

<comment><USER16> Forward and back is just the tip of the iceberg. I also have gestures for switching between tabs (sending Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab to applications), closing and un-closing tabs, opening a new tab, middle clicking, refreshing a page, scrolling to the top or bottom of the page, maximizing a window. And that's on top of the gestures provided natively by macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I loathe the fact that scrollbars are now hidden. I'm constantly looking for it to either

a) find out how big the page is b) scroll more precisely

I don't even understand why they would remove them? Who ever complained of a scroll bar?

<comment><USER18> I wonder if the designers of the systems , after becoming so bored with the status quo, begin to fetishize the sleek hidden thing that is scroll bar right now ... like when coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking , almost akin to tight 3 character variable leet code solutions etc.. maybe this is just the same phenomenon tearing its head in the design world , except instead of compact code blocks its compact UIs that , to a certain metric, yes , the designer has pushed further on a certain metric ex; see more of the application window cause scroll bar is hidden, but loses sight of what is lost.

<comment><USER19> > like when coders are writing algorithms for say, 10-15 years I bet their > code gets a lot more compact and sleek looking , almost akin to tight 3 > character variable leet code solutions

I have never seen that to be the case unless in an environment with very heavy constraints like embedded. If anything, a competent programmer 10-15 years in would skew towards more descriptive and clear variable naming as they've been burned in the past by having to maintain some of that "leet" code.

<comment><USER20> Right on. Readability is a virtue in its own right, compactness is not.

'Cute' code that leverages language features in creative and surprising ways, generally belongs on code golf competitions, not production systems. If your code is so 'clever' that only you can understand it, that means you're a bad programmer, not a good one. (That's not to say you should avoid making appropriate use of advanced language features for fear of ignorant readers, though. That's another matter.)

Ada was far ahead of the game here, explicitly prioritising readability over writeability, in its language design.

With all that said, an experienced programmer may feel less need to write comments, as their own familiarity with the problem-domain and with the language will be well developed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Alternatively, you can set the scrollbars to be visible at all times by > setting System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.

Hidden scrollbars recently caused me an extra day of work. I was documenting all options in hundreds of html select boxes (dropdowns) on a legacy product being rewritten.

Many of these dropdowns were vertically scrollable, but macOS using Chrome did not display a scrollbar. I had no idea they were scrollable and missed many options in my documenta3.

I could not look at the html for it as it was minimized and not easily searchable.

<comment><USER22> Here's a tip you can try next time you have a problem like this. Maybe your task was somehow resistant to this, in which case I really do understand your pain and am not trying to paper it over, but just in case this could benefit you or folks like you:

In Chrome:

1) Right click on element you want to grab all of the contents of, and select Inspect Element. NOTE: If this element is the sort that isn't properly placed in the DOM and/or disappears when focus/mouse leaves, you can freeze the current DOM...but the right way to do that will depend on your context.

2) In Elements tab in Dev tools, the element should now be highlighted. You may need a parent or child element. But hopefully you can find it nearby and verify you have the right one with the Inspect tooling.

3) Right click on the element that has all your data in the DOM. Select Copy. Sometimes it will be enough to just Copy Element and paste it somewhere where you can start organizing the data. But for your task, it sounds like you might want to write a script for this so you can do it across multiple Elements. So, try Copy > Copy JS Path.

4) You now have access to the DOM element, even if it was created dynamically by JS and exists in the Shadow DOM. Try "paste" in the Console tab of Chrome DevTools.

5) The thing you grabbed might not be exactly the right one. Navigate down to the level you want to iterate across with the "children" attribute. Example:

        const myStuff = document
          .querySelector("#output > shadow-output")
          .shadowRoot.querySelector("div > ul > li:nth-child(2)")
          .children[0].children

6) You now have an HTMLCollection. You could be done! See if this gives you what you need:

        console.table(myStuff, ["innerHTML"])

-7) Unfortunately, HTMLCollections are only Array- _like_. Fortunately, it's very easy to convert.

        const stuffArr = [...myStuff]

-8) Now that you have a proper Array filled with HTML elements, you can do any kind of processing you need to grab the data you want.

        const mappedStuff = stuffArr.map(x=> { /* transform each thing */ }
        console.table(mappedStuff)

Hope this helps somebody write a script to remove the tedium from a data extraction job.

<comment> 52-6F-62 > _1) Right click on element you want to grab all of the contents of, and > select Inspect Element. NOTE: If this element is the sort that isn 't > properly placed in the DOM and/or disappears when focus/mouse leaves, you > can freeze the current DOM...but the right way to do that will depend on > your context._

Just to extend a touch—I use CMD+Shift+C or CTRL+Shift+C countless times in a day while debugging, or sometimes for this very reason. The shortcut is the same across browsers—at least Chrome/Edge/FF/Safari.

Instead of right clicking, it'll give you a "target" for selecting an element and highlight it before clicking.

In the console the selected element will be immediately accessible by `$0`.

Eg,

        $0.innerHTML;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Strongly related: viewport units (vw, vh, vmin, vmax) are fundamentally and irreconcilably broken if your document has scrollbars, because they include the size of document scrollbars, so that 100vw is equal to 100% + 17px if you have a 17px wide scrollbar there (the most likely value on Windows), so now all of a sudden you have a horizontal scrollbar too. Or your nicely calculated layout that thought that 33vw + 33vw + 33vw < 100% is now wrong and wrapping the third block on screens less than 1700px wide. There used to be a weird way of opting out of scrollbar inclusion (I think it involved `overflow: scroll` and something else on the root element, I think, but I don't remember the exact incantation), but Firefox was the only browser that implemented it, and no one else wanted to (they said "no one wants this"—untrue, I say—"and it's weird and inconsistent"—which _was_ true).

We need a new set of units that excludes document scrollbars. Or a constant like env(scrollbar-width) that represents the scrollbar width so that you can subtract it yourself, which would be useful in a few other places as well (instead I've done the likes of `var(--scrollbar-width, 20px)` and calculate and define --scrollbar-width on the root element in JavaScript).

<comment><USER24> I dealt with this just a few days ago. A client's design was mocked in webflow and it decided to use 'static' for the header at 100vw. Which meant that on browsers that hide the scroll bar, the page jiggles left and right every time you scroll.

That was fun to fix because I had to rebuild the entire header since a ton of other webflow-generated CSS depended on that thing being static.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've encountered this last year when I took over a project with a dev staff solely using Chrome on macOS.

The thing was: We catered for gamers which means Chrome or Firefox on Windows was the norm. We got a lot of bug reports like "hideous scrollbars in shop item description" or "hideous scrollbars in menu" where the devs were puzzled about the bug reports.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes! Far too many developers now only check that the page renders nicely on Chrome on their expensive macbook. While most of their users may be having a less than stellar screen and don't see the contrasts, run old hardware and a different OS+browser combo.

<comment><USER27> Same complaint with contrast aye

Yes your giga HD retina Mac displays these colours perfectly, I'm sure it looks great. On my screen however I can't read a damn thing.

<comment><USER28> Kind of an off-topic but recently I noticed capturing a gameplay video of an HDR-enabled video game with any kind of software (OBS, Twitch Studio, GeForce Experience, FRAPS, Discord) also produces terrible results. This happens even if I capture the entire monitor or just the app window. Both OpenGL and DirectX games suffer from this.

How one can tell whether what you capture/develop is what you will see without testing it on a second monitor? What is the subject I must do research on to learn more about this?

I'm not just talking about color spaces, but also how these multiple software communicate image data in a lossless way, how window modes (fullscreen, borderless, windowed) affect these flows, where HDR stands in this.

<comment><USER29> That's color management. A surprisingly fucky area from an application developer's perspective, because pretty much only DirectX 11/12 and Vulkan even have that concept -- and both DXGI and Vulkan are pretty limited [1]. Obviously, HDR and non-sRGB color spaces only work windowed in Windows, because DWM does scRGB, everywhere else your app needs to be in exclusive fullscreen. Note that Wayland on Linux doesn't support exclusive fullscreen, and since Wayland only does 8-bit sRGB, nothing on Wayland can use anything other than 8-bit sRGB. This might be fixed eventually (guess it'll take about as long as it took for GIMP).

As a general rule of thumb, if it has anything to do with colors and comes from either computer or photography people, there's a solid 99 % chance it's broken or doesn't even know what color is. If you want to know how it's done right, you gotta look at how the "moving photos" people do it.

(Note: "everything" for me means "everything that's not Apple", because I cba to care about those snowflakes)

[1] Yes, yes, OpenGL has sRGB types for framebuffers, which doesn't work on half the devices in the wild (on the other half it applies the sRGB gamma function to linear sRGB data) and isn't meaningful anyway, because we _don't_ want to use sRGB. DXGI only does Rec.709 and Rec.2020, no DCI P3, and it also treats everything that's not HDR as sRGB.

<comment><USER28> > If you want to know how it's done right, you gotta look at how the "moving > photos" people do it.

So basically, all I need is a software which can do post-capture tonemapping on captured pixels before streaming the frames.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I need to use a MacBook as my work machine (for a little over three years now), and generally have a strong dislike of the platform. It's just similar enough to Linux to lull me into believing that I kinda know what I'm doing, but just different enough to make me feel incompetent whenever I try to actually do anything nontrivial.

        System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.

I stumbled across this little gem about a year ago, and has been one of the bigger quality-of-life improvements I've found on this machine.

<comment><USER31> The other being

        System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys

and map Caps Lock to Escape

<comment><USER32> Or Control, depending on which you're used to. Every time I try to use Windows I'm surprised that there's no easy-to-access setting for remapping Caps Lock like there is on every Linux DE and macOS.

<comment><USER33> You can really have it remapped to anything, really. Mine is remapped to F18 via hidutil to serve as a "hyper" key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Increasingly many sites are opting for overlay scrollbars that are exceedingly difficult to actually use. It's almost as if they don't want you to use the scrollbar yet provide one for compliance. They are often very thin (just a few pixels) and coloured dark gray upon black background and won't expand to a bigger size until you successfully squint and hunt it down and precisely position the pointer over it.

<comment><USER35> That's because the "designers" don't give a shit about the users' actual needs. They just want the thing to be pretty. They'll also fuck with it every once in a while, making random pointless changes, just to keep the look "fresh". Way too many artistes can easily sneak onto your UX staff.

Also watch out for people from marketing and the like who put pressure on the UX people to do that sort of thing. People who don't actually know how to make anything work, and don't have to actually _use_ it to get work done, tend to be obsessed with how it looks.

A few casual users who don't actually need to get anything done will usually support this kind of time-wasting idiocy, and the offenders will point to their feedback for validation. Unfortunately people who write reviews are often in that category, since they rarely make practical use of what they're reviewing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> While folks are rightfully bashing macOS's hidden scroll bars, I would like to advertise an iOS feature that is actually pro-scroll bar. As of iOS 13, you can grab the scroll bar to scroll at hyper speed rather than repeatedly flicking the screen. Not sure if there's a proper name for this feature but it's explained here [https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/08/05/scroll-faster- iphon...](https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/08/05/scroll-faster-iphone-ipad- tutorial/)

<comment><USER37> We used to call that "using the scroll bar".

<comment><USER33> iOS devices were not nearly performant enough to allow that until recently ;)

<comment><USER38> Not sure if you're being serious or not... I mean I thought these iPhones were faster than PCs. I've been able to scroll since I had my first 486.

<comment><USER33> I'm being serious. The first iPhones were years behind comparable desktop hardware of the time. It's only recently that iPhones have caught up and surpassed them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > If you are a front-end developer that uses macOS, I kindly ask you to > dedicate a little more attention to how the websites you create behave on > platforms other than your own.

I'd take that one step farther - no matter what platform you code on, test your UX on all the others.

<comment><USER40> I'm looking at you, all sites that only work on Chrome and break in subtle ways on Firefox or Safari.

<comment><USER41> The worst are sites which get broken every other year (each time they are redesigned/rewritten) whereas they provide nothing more, feature-wise, than what they provided 15 years ago. And yet it forces you to update your browser to one that provides the latest compatibility with the latest Chrome "feature".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Alternatively, you can set the scrollbars to be visible at all times by > setting System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.

One of the best things I think I've done for quality purposes is require all developers, QA team members, and project managers have scrollbars turned on at all times. It's sent the number of sites with hidden overflow in production down to near-zero for us. Someone, somewhere down the line will end up seeing that your page is 300px wider than the viewport before it hits production. And because that usually indicates other problems (often related to accessibility), it usually has a domino effect of discovering other issues that need to be fixed.

It has definitely made a marked improvement to the quality of our work, and I recommend everyone require their teams using Macs to require scrollbars be set to "Always"

</comment><comment><USER43> If you read between the lines, you should understand that the root cause of issue is the macOS developer monoculture.

All you need is _one_ Windows or Linux-based developer in your team to catch those kind of issues. But so many dev teams are macOS-only those days, whereas, apart from US and 2-3 other rich countries, 80%+ or even more of actual desktop users are Windows-based.

(There are many other problems with macOS monoculture, for example, the spread of ultrathin fonts that look nice and crisp on retina macbook but result in very low contrast rendering on Windows).

US-based devs: outside of your country (that is, >95% of humanity), most people _do not_ have a Mac, an iPhone, nor use MM/DD/YYYY dates and 12-hour clock.

<comment><USER44> I think the macOS monoculture is going to go away in the next few years because on one side macOS is becoming more and more developer hostile with each release and on the other side WSL (and WSL2) is improving the Windows developer experience a lot.

I use Windows as my daily driver OS now for both native/web/mobile/devops work and I expect to see more and more developers making that same switch in the coming years.

<comment><USER45> For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

<comment><USER46> To suggest that "bug wise" it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don't have to worry about much if you're using a Mac. I'm not gonna say that one of these is better than the other, but to suggest they have equivalency wrt common scenarios is a bit strange.

Also, Mac is a certified UNIX environment, it is native.

<comment><USER47> I think the corollary is "consider Ubuntu, but still don't skimp on hardware". Buy a proper laptop that ships with Ubuntu, buy a proper connector cable if you need one, etc.

<comment><USER33> I don't think paying more for hardware significantly changes the problem that was brought up.

<comment><USER38> I think what he is saying is, don't buy a cheap-ass Dell that runs Windows 10S, then expect to be development powerhouse where all the hardware works properly. He is suggesting buying a developer-oriented laptop that is designed and supported to be running Linux. You'll have less weird hardware quirks that way.

<comment><USER47> Yep, that's exactly what I meant - and peripherals too. I'm sure a big reason Apple products don't have problems video calling or connecting to projectors is high-end hardware, and I don't think the difference between MacOS and Ubuntu on comparable hardware is anywhere near as striking as their reputations would have you believe.

<comment><USER48> I really, highly doubt that. Autodetecting and using proper settings for a newly-discovered display device (projector) is fundamentally a software consideration, not hardware: the hardware into which you connect the display is capable of talking to it (maybe not at ideal resolution depending on specs, but whatever), but the OS needs to discover, detect, and configure the new connection properly.

The same is true for Zoom: things like accelerated video streaming are universally supported on laptop GPUs, but software support is spotty for some apps/OSes. Things like screen sharing are 100% software-side.

While I'd love to use a Linux workstation (and often do), it's simply not there yet in those areas. That has nothing to do with "high-end hardware" and everything to do with less robust software support than many alternatives-- including MacOS.

I guess you could make the case that because MacOS has to support fewer kinds of hardware, they can spend more time on making software support robust, but I'm neither convinced of that argument nor convinced that's what you meant by your post.

<comment><USER47> You'd think that, but once I replaced my €5 AliExpress connector cable by a proper one, suddenly I haven't had any issues with projectors any more.

Likewise, if you use an underpowered laptop, or one for which Ubuntu doesn't have proper drivers, you're going to have a hard time using Zoom.

I'm not saying that you'll never have issues (which I'm sure holds for MacOS as well), or even that you might not have slightly more issues than on MacOS (see your last paragraph), but things are definitely not as bad as comments online would have you believe, because many of those _can_ be ascribed to issues like I mentioned above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've been guilty of this. Normally I like to blame CSS for all of my personal failures, but I think the definition of "overflow" is intuitive enough. I was hesitant to turn on visible scrollbars system-wide because I thought it might be ugly. I did and it's not, so I second the author's suggestion to do that.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think part of the problem is that this "feature" masks the need to properly understand scroll behavior (at least if you only use platforms that auto-hide scrollbars).

Recently, we were doing a bug safari for a new product feature that was about to launch. I noticed that an element had a scrollbar when it shouldn't, and filed a bug. One of the developers picked it up, and first said "not a bug. I don't see it on my computer." I showed him the bug on my machine, and he looked at it for a few minutes before saying "I don't know how to fix it." I pointed out that the overflow-x was set to "scroll" in the CSS for that component, and he could just set it to "auto" to fix the behavior (since the scrollbar should never show up in normal usage of that feature). It turns out that he didn't even know "auto" existed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hidden features extends to many things.

On NTFS you can hide an arbitrarily large file in the "Alternate datastream" of any file. Explorer doesn't show you alternate datastreams and certainly doesn't show you they are possible.

You can use VLC to play a bluray from what appears to be a 1kb text file in Explorer.

If you have that on a USB stick, the properties of the USB stick will reflect the capacity loss of the bluray image. But Explorer won't show you why or which file has it...

[https://blog.foldersecurityviewer.com/ntfs-alternate-data- st...](https://blog.foldersecurityviewer.com/ntfs-alternate-data-streams-the- good-and-the-bad/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Hidden scrollbars are just terrible UX all round for so many reasons:

\- Discoverability: You don't even know if a container is scrollable at all until you try.

\- Orientation: You don't know where you are in a document until you scroll to make the bar appear, and then you have to notice it before it disappears

\- Usability: It's much harder to target the scroll thumb to drag it. To find it you need to again scroll first, then notice it, then target it with the mouse, all under time pressure before it disappears.

If you're on MacOS, do yourself (and your users) a favor and set them to always show.

</comment><comment><USER52> "introduced an enhanced scrollbar behavior that made scrollbars hidden by default"

That's not enhanced at all, it's horrible, and scrollbars should be more contrastful and bigger again

<comment><USER53> But that's silly when the preferred method of scrolling is a mouse wheel or a swipe nether actually require the scollbar as a touch/click target.

The actual useful UI left is "does this thing scroll", "where on the page am I", and "the grab and flick" gesture on touch to scroll faster.

In hindsight I think the mistake was having scrollbars be part of the document flow instead of hovering invisibly over the content until they're needed.

<comment><USER54> The scrollbar does still provide valuable context over what scrolls, how big the scroll area is and how far you have scrolled. The second two you can solve by just scrolling a little to see the popup scroll indicator but discoverability is huge and I often am confused by this when I am using macOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I use an old IBM laptop with only a pointing stick (the red nipple in the middle of the keyboard).

I don't mind having to move my mouse to the scrollbar and drag it to scroll documents or webpages (when I can't use the keyboard for that already).

This was fine until a few years ago when scrollbars starting to hide or become super thin. I should not have to concentrate to be able to target scrollbars with my cursor.

If you're working on UX/UI design, please remember that not everyone has or uses a scrollwheel on their mice.

</comment><comment><USER56> While on the subject of people creating user-hostile experiences, try disabling "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" in Firefox. Now instead of a different set of fonts for _every single website_ because of some misguided form-over-content design wankery I can read things with one less distraction.

<comment><USER9> I actually tried that, and it has its own downsides. Sometimes pages get icons by drawing from characters in higher codepoints, and so the icons will get randomly replaced with Greek letters and random symbols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Hiding scrollbars is one of the worse ux antipatterns.. it makes it difficult to see IF there is more content and which part can be scrolled (if any)

</comment><comment><USER58> A lot of developers I worked with only using their MacBook & iPhone to do tests. Many sites do not fully responsive also. For example, the github.com only support 1280px width and above. Below that, padding & buttons rendered incorrectly.

And I think this is a trend in the open-source that developers reject Windows patches, or never really try to fix the bugs.

Now a lot of tools are only designed for MacOS first. Linux is extra because it's easy to migrate. For example, Facebook Watchman. It's about 5 years but still unstable for Windows I think.

And many web tools, even Android development, I found it's no errors in MacOS but have to fix the config or do extra yourself to get it to work properly.

</comment><comment><USER15> > In 2011, Apple released Mac OS X Lion which introduced an enhanced scrollbar > behavior that made scrollbars hidden by default.

I don't think hiding scrollbars can really be termed an enhancement; 'mistake' at best or 'user-hostile behavior' at worst seem more appropriate.

The original Macintosh GUI succeeded so well because it made it so easy to see what was possible. It laid an awful lot of stuff out right there on the screen in front of the user, and what was hidden was easy to get at. They spent a ton of time testing an improving usability. Modern macOS, OTOH, just doesn't feel right anymore; I suspect it is designed to look good, not to be usable.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like how this page also has four levels of scrollbars, and the title has two. It's an interesting sort of border effect.

</comment><comment><USER59> I noticed this a few years ago on a project I was working on, and ever since I've always enabled scroll bars on my work laptops.

More recently, a few weeks ago we had a bug in our app that was caused by an India time zone. Our company is fully U.S.-based so nobody noticed. Since then I've kept my computer in the India time zone so that time zone issues are readily apparent. I've already caught another one since then.

There's a more general principle here of "user empathy": configuring your environment so that you're in the same boat as your users.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have noticed this too. This page itself immediately distressed me with its deliberate overdone use of `overflow: scroll`, so much so that I honestly almost left it without reading, which seems a little weird when I reflect on it, but… ugh, multiple useless scrollbars. I think this must be what people mean when they describe something "triggering" them.

I think there are two parts to the problem: ① a popular developer platform using overlay scrollbars; and ② the fact that `overflow: scroll` _sounds like_ what people want, when it's actually not (as you say, they wanted `overflow: auto`). If I could rewrite the history of just this one property, I'd rename `scroll` to `always-show-scrollbar` or `show-scrollbar-even-if-insufficient- content-to-scroll` or similar. Or maybe split `overflow` in two and use `scrollbar-show: always;`.

Hmm. I wonder if we _could_ convince browser makers to kill off `overflow: scroll`, making it equivalent to `overflow: auto` due to rampant abuse (there's precedent for this sort of thing), and replace it with a new, more clearly-named property `scrollbar-show: always`. (And `scrollbar-{x,y,inline,block}-show` to go with it.) Maybe `always` wouldn't be quite the right keyword, given that it wouldn't be affecting the behaviour of platforms with overlay scrollbars. But this actually sounds both reasonable and feasible to me, given that `overflow: scroll` is subject to rampant abuse due to misunderstanding and was basically only a tiny quality of life thing for certain corner cases in layouts anyway.

</comment><comment><USER60> Wow, that's pretty bad. I'm guessing the front end developers of those sites just do everything on a Mac and never check how the site looks on Windows or Linux.

<comment><USER61> Even worse, they tend just do it just on Mac and only in Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The reason `overflow: scroll` is a better default is the need to account for every screen size or possible dynamic content. If overflow is set to `hidden` or worse `visible` your UI is going to break on some screen sizes. So basically you need to decide if you want extra scroll bars for some screens, or broken UI when a user shrinks the browser. It's very time consuming to get everything right on every screen size on every browser on every OS.

<comment><USER23> `overflow: scroll` shows the scrollbars always, and should just about never be used. >99.99% of the time, you want `overflow: auto` instead, which only shows scrollbars if they will _do_ anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Designers don't get it. What do they teach in design schools these days? Genuine question. I hope stuff like this is brought up? How do you even become a UI designer?

<comment><USER64> I took a "designing the user experience" class in as part of my computer science curriculum (not in the design or art school).

It was much more rigorous than other design content I watch (e.g. skillshare, youtube), which are usually based on how something looks (emotion) and not the actual efficiency or usefulness of the design.

In the industry we really should distinguish between UI Architects and Aesthetic Designers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> On many Mobile Apps I also found that the scroll bar is just a small dot and it only appears when I do scroll a bit, so it's very difficult to see how much is left to read. This is particularly annoying because I have to scroll down to estimate how much is left and then scroll up back to where I was.

I have on idea what school of thought has brought forth the no-UI UI but I absolutely think they are idiots.

</comment><comment><USER66> I like how the title of the article has a hidden scroll bar (reading on iPhone).

<comment><USER67> Indeed. I just set scrollbars to always show on my Macbook per the author's suggestion and there are 4 scrollbars on their page!

Makes me wonder if I'm missing the point of the fairly simple post?

<comment><USER68> That's clearly intentional to make the point. Made me appreciate the article more.

<comment><USER67> Ah! It's only on that post, not the rest of the site. Clever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Ooo those hidden/slim scrollbars are annoying. It's as bad as an auto-hiding taskbar.

When I first saw it the first thing I did was to find a way to get rid of it. In Windows it's: Settings > Ease of Access > "Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows" > Off

</comment><comment><USER70> Great read, and nice examples to show how important the issue is (at least, relative to web design).

This just reminds me of how lovely it would be to have complete interoperability between every browser, every OS, mobile or desktop... And how unlikely it is to happen in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm on MacOS and have `Show school bars: Always` set, but I still wish the scroll bars were slightly wider.

They're undoing much of what Ive did to MacOS, it's time to include making scroll bars as big and useful as they used to be!

</comment><comment><USER72> Great article! Short read and proves his point excellently by calling out big sites that are making the mistake he points out. The Snapchat example is the best, looks terrible on my Windows machine on Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER73> Help Scout have this discoverability problem with dropdown menus - there's no scroll bar when the content overflows, so I had no idea there were more options until a colleague pointed it out.

I felt absolutely ridiculous and ashamed after that. So, I make a point of designing all my software with visible scroll bars and other visible features that a user could reasonably expect to find without having to hunt or guess.

Sure, it doesn't look as "pretty" but it's so much more useable.

</comment><comment><USER74> Whenever I looked for website templates to purchase, I always hated those that had a jQuery library to "restore" the scrollbar.

I misunderstood the intent and I thought that they were just replacing the scrollbar to style it, which as a side effect broke the behavior with a mouse in Windows/Linux, but it took me long to understand that it was because Mac OS removed them by default and it was not just designers being obsessed about styling the scrollbars...

</comment><comment><USER75> I recall a point by Jobs et al. wherein the original case for GUI drop-down menus was motivated by a clear desire for discoverability, versus the arcane keyboard shortcuts of the IBM applications of the time.

That stuck with me for a long time, and I remembered it when MacOS and iOS first began departing from that philosophy with their modern looks. I would say Jony Ive contributed a lot to this transition from user-friendliness to design-led, form-over-function.

</comment><comment><USER76> I would very much want a way to toggle scroll bars on and of within the browser, eg a Toolbar button that I can add through an extension.

The fact that I can only toggle it at an OS level is pretty bad. I love the invisible scroll bars and I would prefer to have them in all apps I use myself, but I do respect the platforms and users who have visible ones, but I shouldn't have to choose between my own user experience and testing for their user experience

</comment><comment><USER77> This trend is sickening. Windows 10 has a nearly 1 second delay when mousing over the Start Menu scroll bar. Why wouldn't I want a scroll bar there? It is the primary thing I seek when I click Start.

In the Gmail Admin interface for users, the scrollbar vanishes unless I have my browser nearly maximized. Do the designers live in a world where their browser is always nearly full screen?

You'd think huge companies would notice and care about these things.

</comment><comment><USER78> On smaller screens I'm kinda ok with scroll bars appearing only when scrolled, but what's with no scroll bars at all on some websites? That irks me like nothing else. I can't even figure out how long the page is and whether I can finish reading it quickly or need to save it for a later time. What do the designers gain from such user hostile designs? And how are people paying for such designs without any oversight or reviews?!

</comment><comment><USER79> I also have this issue with the disappearing window borders.

I remember on IRIX they were so bold, a real tool to be used. Same on Windows up to and including Windows 7. Now it's like you have a 2 pixel wide invisible border, hard to click, which may be the shadow of the window, or at the edge in the window; it's hard, specially when working over VNC. Nothing is gained by freeing up those 10 horizontal and vertical pixels.

</comment><comment><USER80> > If you are a front-end developer that uses macOS, I kindly ask you to > dedicate a little more attention to how the websites you create behave on > platforms other than your own.

I think this is a lost cause. A lot of macOS people are "zealots" and they feel that anyone who uses anything else is simply "wrong." I've long dealt with designers like this and realized I can't win.

</comment><comment><USER81> Even Google has this problem[0].

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/kusIhDh.png](https://i.imgur.com/kusIhDh.png)

</comment><comment><USER82> And discoverability is the no 1 problem of the command line interface, that's why a lot of people don't like the command line so much.

It would be a lot nicer if, while typing a command, a list of options came up, along with a short explanation and example, and by clicking the option the full documentation for it would come up.

But that cannot happpen, console apps have no connection to a UI.

</comment><comment><USER83> What is the reason for this developer monoculture?

</comment><comment><USER84> This is only a problem for the web because web developers are using broken OSX to develop.

The amount of hidden-ness/clevery fuckery in OSX is maddening. I would implore every one to complain to Apple to fix their broken OS.

The web is fine, the garbage developers are putting out is because of the broken dumpster fire of OSX.

</comment><comment><USER85> All valid criticisms. The hidden scroll bar is also really hard to use. It removes the ability to jump to a position by clicking. It's hard to see sometimes too.

You'll notice that Apple loves to champion usability (HIG etc) ... except when it flies in the face of their minimalist aesthetic.

</comment><comment><USER86> this is my most hated Apple "UI modernization." Its not just a problem with website, apps, even Apple apps don't deal with it well. I always turn on scroll bars all the time (I do a lot of work with very long documents or files, and just scrolling with the scroll wheels doesn't cut it for these), and every time I do a VNC connection using the built in screen sharing app, the scroll bars are placed in the remote screen area, rather than outside it. So every time I connect to a remote screen, the first thing I have to do is enlarge the window so I can see everything.

</comment><comment><USER87> Oy. Not fun to see Render on the list. We just fixed the horizontal scrollbar!

</comment><comment><USER88> Note that in some instances `scroll` instead of `auto` is warranted. When a scrollbar is placed because of `auto`, its contents are laid out differently than `scroll`, and might cut out some content.

</comment><comment><USER89> I fell victim to this while implementing my personal website. An easy fix to be sure, and one that I think is worth it for the hidden scroll bars (which I prefer), but kind of annoying.

</comment><comment><USER90> This problem is so endemic for so many years now, I wonder why the browser devtools have options to turn off caching but not option to turn on the scroll bar during dev mode.

</comment><comment><USER91> I really like the dichotomy presented in the argument that I should change my settings so scrollbars are _always_ visible because they're ugly and not needed.

</comment><comment><USER92> As someone who has scroll bars always turned on, I actually added a step in our CI that forbids `overflow: scroll`. auto is fine, scroll is never OK.

</comment><comment><USER93> Woah, Thanks for bringing it up. These are the things that remind web developers to test the cross-browser compatibility, chrome is not the universe.

</comment><comment><USER94> The microsecond of time which is the quantum between seeing the scroll element, moving focus and it going away again before you can grab it ....

</comment><comment><USER95> Another example missing from the list: twitter.com. The navigation (when logged in) has an unnecessary vertical scrollbar.

</comment><comment><USER96> and then there is the new firefox for android which decided to just remove the scroll bar entirely in its new tab list. so if you have lets say the now usual amount of open tabs, you don't have any idea where or how far along in the list you are. i wonder what the reasoning behind that was?

</comment><comment><USER97> Let's not forget horizontal scrollbars that cover the last line of a code you want to copy....

</comment><comment><USER98> It was a happy day when I discovered you could disable auto hiding of scrollbars in OSX.

</comment><comment><USER99> I like to hide my scrollbars by putting it into another div with an overflow hidden

</comment><comment><USER100> I dont like the very thin scroll bar in JetBrain IDEs.

</comment><comment><USER101> Problem: Apple breaks the web.

Solution: web developers should change how they do CSS to accommodate Apple.

</comment><comment><USER102> Guilty as charged

</comment><comment><USER103> Asking Mac users to think about the existence of other OSes?

Grab your ptichfors brothers and sisters, we have another heretic to burn at the stake!

</comment><comment><USER104> I have dealt with this problem in an Electron app I designed and support. The different platform scrollbar behaviors drove me mad because of my insistence on a common experience.

I really like the hidden scrollbars that Apple settled on. They are easy to identify by hovering the cursor over scroll-able content and they just act as an overlay over the content. In windows, the content is actually shifted the width of the scrollbar which is terrible for UI consistency in some cases. There is the problem that hidden scrollbars remove the "discovery" aspect of traditional scrollbars, but I find this to be a very minor loss in practice. I don't miss having a sliver of a scrollbar for large content blocks.

I ultimately just settled on styling scrollbars in CSS, making them a bit slimmer and forcing that behavior on the Mac for consistency. Scrollbars look nice, match my UI look and feel, minimally shift content and look consistent across all platforms.

I threw away all of the custom JS approaches that try to mimic Apple's solution because none were perfect and, in every case, introduced new problems that disqualified them entirely.

<comment><USER105> That's a lot of work to make sure every user's experience on their platform is inconsistent.

<comment><USER104> Seems like you responded to the wrong comment.

<comment><USER105> "I threw away all of the custom JS approaches that try to mimic Apple's solution because none were perfect and, in every case, introduced new problems that disqualified them entirely."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> > I kindly ask you to dedicate a little more attention to how the websites you > create behave on platforms other than your own.

Agreed.

> Alternatively, you can set the scrollbars to be visible at all times by > setting System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.

Disagree. Now you're using a different UI layout than the vast majority of your users!

<comment><USER26> Are your majority of users really using a macbook? Maybe if you're a hip SaaS startup.

<comment><USER106> I mean that a Mac with scrollbars enabled is still a different layout than Windows or Linux with scrollbars enabled. They all have different appearances, widths, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Really, am I the only person here who can't understand the complaints on hiding scrollbars? I do agree with a lot of things that resonates HN, but this is one thing that I have never understood.

Stop complaining about discoverability, everyone that knows how to browse the web knows how to scroll. It's like worrying whether the user will know how to use a mouse when you're designing a web page. Scrolling is not something like shortcuts or tabs - you need it to move around, which means you get to know it as soon as you start your computer and after the first knowing phase it's visual clutter.

Also, I would like to ask whether users will usually even want to click on the scrollbar to move around. Unless the small number of cases where the page is long and you want to move around quickly (and if you have ever been in that case, you know that even there using the scrollbar is pretty useless because it's too sensitive - you are usually less precise when you use a scrollbar, not more), there's virtually no reason to click it. Computer screen estate is precious because not everyone is using a 27-inch display (13-inch display here), so that's a pretty big reason to hide the scrollbar.

<comment><USER108> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I can't think of a reason for scrollbars to exist in the first place. You always have a physical way to scroll. If a user doesn't know how to scroll, it's a problem with the device, not your software. The only purpose of the scroll bar is to show your current position in the page, which doesn't require persistence.

<comment><USER109> It's sometimes also the only indication that an element is scrollable. Usually there are other cues, an unfinished sentence or partially clipped text/graphics, but sometimes you're left with a perfectly plausible looking clip and would never guess there's more underneath.</comment></comment></comment>