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[D H <774098@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have to totally agree on all points with Ingo Ruhnke on his first
post.  These overlay scroll bars are completely useless.  One of the
problems maybe the programmer's are using a an old 100dpi mouse or
something?  As I find it almost impossible to mouse over or click on an
overlay scroll bar.  A lot of people have modern mice with 1200dpi on up
to 4000dpi and beyond with monitors in the 3840 x 2160 range and beyond
and the tiny fraction of a second the pointer tracks over the new
"improved" scroll bar's few pixels is simply too little to make
efficient page control.

I have patched every version of Ubuntu I have used to fix the overlay
scroll bar issue since the "feature" was added. Its on almost every web
site with things to do when you update Ubuntu ...   To me when its that
prevalent that fixing that "feature" is on all these lists of "things to
do", it means that "feature" needs fixing.

This needs to be listed as a permanent bug until some sanity returns on
the scroll bar defaults.

In my last update to 14.04 I gained another "feature" on the scroll bar
bit to fix.  That in the swapping of the single page click of the left
mouse on the scroll bar's panel to go up and down by page which now does
random page movements.  The right mouse button now runs the regular page
up or page down.  Why this was changed I have no clue?  I have not been
able to find a patch that returns the mouse click scroll to the right
buttons yet?  Getting the scroll bar click arrows back would be nice
too, but isn't as big a problem as swapped buttons or un-overlay'ing the
scroll bar.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/774098

Title:
  Overlay scrollbars are inconsistent and hard to use

Status in overlay-scrollbar:
  Opinion
Status in overlay-scrollbar package in Ubuntu:
  Opinion

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: overlay-scrollbar

  Foreword: Sorry, that's more a rant then a proper bug report, but I
  haven't really found a single good reason for overlay-scrollbar to
  exist, just a whole lot of reason why its really bad.

  The overlay scrollbar is one of those crazy wheel reinventions for no
  reason in the new Ubuntu, here a few basic reasons why it sucks:

  * it's inconsistent, when windows are maximuzed or close to the screen border it will pop up on the right, otherwise it will pop up on the left
  * it's inconsistent as it is hardly used by anything, even among Gtk+ applications only a tiny fractions make use of it and there is no chance that any of the non Gtk applications will ever make use of it
  * it's invisible and thus much harder to hit then a visible scrollbar
  * it's impossible to hit in a single straight line when approaching a window from the right, it will only pop up once inside the window, but when that happens it will pop up on the outside of the window, so you have to move your mouse close, stop, then move back to click it
  * selections have the same color as the scrollbar, thus when a widget has a selection that goes till the edge it will blend into the scrollbar, making it not only look weird, but in the worst case completely invisible when scrollbar and selecting merge into one
  * it's much smaller then a classic scrollbar, real scrollbars fill the whole height of the window, overlay only fills the tiny portion that is the visible part of a document, thus you have a much smaller area to click on for page-up/down events
  * it doesn't pop up under the mouse, but a few pixels to the right, this makes it incredible frustrating to use, as the regular pattern of "graphical reaction -> I am hovering over the item" becomes untrue
  * the thing you want least in your GUI is randomly blinking stuff, yet overlay does exactly that, whenever you move your mouse around the screen overlay scrollbars pops up and fades out
  * if you are off by a single pixel to the right it will disappear instantly, forcing you not only to travel that pixel back, but to travel all the way to the left to make it reappear and then back to the right to actually click it, making it not only hard to hit, but actually punishment, as you get reset to an earlier stage then where you failed
  * buttons that are clickable and dragable at the same time without clear visual indication that they are special
  * it's extremely tiny, yeah the point is to save "screen real estate", but seriously, a scrollbar is worth more then four pixels that look more like a graphic glitch then a user element
  * it violates Fitt's law on maximized windows

  To sum things up, the overlay scrollbar is baffling. It is not just a
  cosmetic change or a small tweak, but a drastic change in usability
  for the worst while providing no new features of its own. The way it
  punishes the user for slipping a few pixels off to the right makes it
  fell more like a frustrating and badly designed maze game where you
  are not allowed to hit the walls then an actual user interface
  element.

  The only good part about the overlay scrollbar is that one can still
  purge it from existence:

  sudo apt-get purge liboverlay-scrollbar.*

  PS: I am using a trackball without the luxury of a separate scroll-
  wheel. I can certainly see how having a scrollwheel might make it more
  tolerable, but that doesn't change the fact that its completely awful
  for actual point&click interaction.

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