styling scrollbars (again)

excuse me while i crusade.
scroll bars need to be styleable.

scroll bars are increasingly becoming integral parts of web page designs and 
thus they should be styleable.  to say that it would be too intrusive for 
the designer to dictate how a browser should display them is like saying the 
same of buttons or text boxes.  the appearance of these controls are also 
operating system dependant under normal circumstances, but few would 
disagree that designers should have the freedom to overwrite their default 
appearences.

in the olden days of yore when the only place a scroll bar appeared was on 
the right side of the window and occasionally at the bottom they were easy 
for designers and users to ignore.  because scroll bars may now appear 
anywhere on a page (with 'overflow: scroll' or with '<iframe>'s, which 
should be part of the Strict DTD, but that's a different list) they are no 
longer purely a part of the user agent -- they are parts of page elements 
and IMO they too should be styled as freely as any other.

keep in mind that i am not requesting that there be outrageous and overly 
confusing styles for scrollbars such that up might mean down and down mean 
up or something.  perhaps a designer wants the scrollbar on the left instead 
of the right.  perhaps not even that, um, extreme.  simple things.  at the 
very minimum they should have the ability to control the the arrow color 
(perhaps it's shape as well -- filled triangles or empty triangles, 
something like that), the button and thumb sizes, and the border color, 
thickness, and style (solid, dashed, groove, etc.).  sure it may just make 
the page look "neat", but if designers didn't want their pages to look 
"neat" then there would be no point in style sheets and everyone could just 
use the default EVERYTHING.

they're just another kind of control.  that's all.

                                                  &#8226; mjumbewu &#8226;

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Received on Wednesday, 25 April 2001 15:18:42 UTC