Custom Scrollbars for Text Field

[andyt]

Is there a way to replace the scrollbars associated with a text field with custom (skinned) scrollbars? My guess is that you have to create custom sliders and somehow link these to a text field set not to display its own scrollbars.

[bogs]

This lesson is explicitly about what your asking.

[FourthWorld]

I would think very carefully before replacing something as common as a scrollbar with a novel implementation.

The work is merely tedious, but not difficult. Bogs' link is good there.

The bigger question is about user expectation: scrollbars are so common throughout an OS that users never think about them at all. That's ideal, it saves their little grey cells for the things that matter most, their own work within your app.

Once we deliver unusual replacements for common elements, it raises the cognitive load, however slightly. It requires a momentary, if unconscious, need to think about the control and how to interact with it.

If the interaction mirrors built-in controls perfectly, the behavior is easily learned. But even the slight learning requirement is wetware cycles taken away from the workflow.

All that said, there are times when an app's workflow is simple, and based more on graphical appeal than productivity features, so that introducing novel implementations of otherwise-standard controls may not be bad at all.

I merely suggesting thinking it over before committing. If nothing else, if you're looking for an excuse to be lazy and put more time into your app's features and less into reinventing standard controls, now you have the rationale you were looking for.

[bogs]

Granted everything said above, I think it is always a good idea to expand your knowledge of how things work, or can be made to work

[dunbarx]

Richard.

"Wetware"?

What have we come to? One day a robot will sneer at us "wets".

Craig

[FourthWorld]

Granted everything said above, I think it is always a good idea to expand your knowledge of how things work, or can be made to work

Learning is good. Making users delighted is good. Sometimes they happen together.

[bogs]

Granted everything said above, I think it is always a good idea to expand your knowledge of how things work, or can be made to work

Learning is good. Making users delighted is good. Sometimes they happen together.

This is why ALL of my scrollbars from now on will be in the image of minions running across the screen! DO MY BIDDING!!

"Wetware"?

Isn't that when someone turns the hose on you, and your still fully dressed?

[andyt]

This lesson is explicitly about what your asking.

Thanks bogs. I've already taken a look at this tutorial but the download code just doesn't appear to work. Using the latest version of Livecode 8 any kind of interaction with the scrollbar throws up a show-stopping error.

[bogs]

My apologies andyt, I don't often find myself in the newer IDEs, and so haven't tested the code against it. What is the error you are seeing?

*Edit - never mind, I downloaded the example and am looking at it. Apparently it throws a 'divide by zero' error at line 301.

While I was able to fix that error, apparently other ...eccentric behaviors happen when testing the example in the newest Lc IDEs. I find this peculiar to say the least. May be time to weed through some of these lessons, or at the very least mark the versions of Lc they run with.

I would not have thought more than a minor correction needed to update it.

[FourthWorld]

May be time to weed through some of these lessons, or at the very least mark the versions of Lc they run with.

That would be awesome. We need more eyeballs on those to be sure. Are those included with the docs at Github?

[bogs]

That I could not say, having never been there myself