Re: Scrollbars In The Box Model

Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
> 
>> fantasai wrote:
>>
>>> Scrollbar placement should not be controlled by CSS. It should be 
>>> consistent with all other applications on a given OS. If the OS
 >>> displays scrollbars on the right, then web page elements should also
 >>> display scrollbars on the right. To have it any other way would just
 >>> confuse the user, since s/he will *expect* it to be on the right.
>>
> Why?
> Say I am using a English machine to read an English page, I should see 
> the scrool bar in the right. If i am reading a Arabic page, I should
 > see the scrool bar on the left  because the page is right to left oriented.
> However, for the case of a page, people may argue that the scroolbar 
> belong to the application, instead of the page. That is not really the
 > case for frameset since in frameset the page could control to display the
 > scroolbar or not. The most needed case is the scroolbar for iframe. If I
 > have a English page which have an iframe which contains a Arabic text in
 > it

then you should have the scrollbars be consistent throughout the page.

Suppose I have two frames side by side. There's a scrollbar in the middle.
Which frame does it belong to?

 > The the web author should decide which side the scrool bar should be
 > placed next to the iframe.

No. The scrollbar is a standard user-application interface, and one that
is used without much thought. It should be consistently positioned for
*all* applications so that I don't have to think about it, and the web
author has no place ruining that consistency.

> If you do not agree me, consider you travle to Egypt and use the Egypt 
> Windows belong to your friend which have all the scroolbar on the left, 
> can you survive to use it to view English web page for a month?

If I use Windows in Egypt, I would want the scrollbar to be consistent
throughout all the applications I use in Egypt. I can adapt much more
easily to having all my applications use a left-positioned scrollbar than
to having the web browser use a right-positioned one and everything else
(word processor, email client, text editor, etc.) use a left-positioned
one.

A far more likely case would be that I stay where I am and just happen to
be able to read both English and Farsi. It would be very annoying to have
the scrollbars on every other page switch sides.

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 8 April 2003 22:03:05 UTC