UX design got better and better for many years...but it has definitely been regressing over the past few years, IMO. It's weaponized minimalism at this point. Because it "looks cool, bro".

It's a variant of enshittification.

Lots of people who are designing websites and webapps are just out for the design. Usability went in the background for whatever reason.

But more and more people are getting more aware of user friendly UI and functions for people with disabilities. But yet it's not the highest priority sadly.

And just straight up broken by idiocy like infinite scroll.

People with dexterity and hand control challenges have a difficult time with these skinny scroll bars.

I have neither dexterity nor hand control challenges and I still find it incredibly hard to grab those skinny scroll bars.

One additional design "feature" I really despise is auto hiding scroll bars. So then to visually see when I am I have to scroll up and down to bring it back.

And web designers that do that stupid scroll hijacking where scrolling "stops" and then things move around for a bit should be launched into the sun. It's the most anti-UX design I've ever seen. It's literally the same as temporarily causing your mouse cursor to move in the opposite direction of input and then calling it a "design feature".

Imagine if each application on your computer arbitrarily changed up the direction your mouse cursor moves. It's literally the same thing. Computer input should be 100% predictable and reliable. The instant you do that it makes the computer/program/website feel sluggish and inoperative.

But if we show a full-sized scrollbar all the time, we lose all that space that we could have left completely empty otherwise!

Yeah, losing function over form is annoying.

I am sick of modern minimalist UI where functionality is not a priority.

I always prefer win32 applications for this reason.

I love it when scrollbars are like, half an atom wide. Makes it easy to use the website.

I would like my scroll bars back please. Scroll wheel on a mouse is not enough. Neither is a fling gesture on touchpad or screen.

I feel you, so I have researched this:

For Firefox you can change the width /style of the scrollbar:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste

about:config

in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste

widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style

(C) Press the Return or Enter key to find the setting. Click the Edit (pencil) button on the right side of the widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style setting.

(D) Delete the current 0 value for the default OS style scrollbar. Then input the value 1 (Mac OS X), 2 (GTX), 3 (Android), 4 (Windows 10), or 5 (Windows 11) in the widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style box for the scrollbar style you want to change to. For example, enter 4 to change the scrollbar to the default Windows 10 design.

(E) Click the Save button on the right side of the widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style setting to apply.

Also for the hiding:

Windows: Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows

Mac: System Preferences > General > Show scroll bars

What the fuck is it with apps just making the scrollbar completely hidden until you scroll with the mouse or keyboard? Microsoft seems like the biggest offender with this. It’s so irritating, they’ve got more than enough space to just keep it around all the time, it’s what I’m expecting to find there, hiding it just makes more annoyed each time. It’s not as bad if you’re using a mouse with a scroll wheel, but on a laptop with a trackpad it’s beyond annoying.

It could be that websites are being made unbearable, to pressure users into switching to the site's mobile apps, which are generally spyware. I can't stand looking at homedepot.com on a phone, for example. Even if I don't look at the screen, I can feel the phone warming up in my hand as the crapware javascript on the site drains the phone battery.

I call it the "War on Scrollbars" and I think it started when some meme about watching a teacher use a computer got popular. https://old.reddit.com/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu/comments/df8cd/watching_someone_use_a_computer/

I absolutely hate how tiny scrollbars have gotten. I hate how clicking in a certain spot cause the scrollbar to move slightly instead of jumping directly to where I click.

These are modern design decisions that I think shitty designers implemented because they need to feel useful. Then, autistic users who want nothing on their screen praise them for it.

It's disgusting and I hope, one day, we can look back on how the 2010s were the worst decade for software design so far.

I have a broken scroll wheel (which happens every 5-10 years, whenever the lifecycle of my mouse reaches its end), and I feel the pain every freakin time I wanna scroll.

Nowadays with such high-resolution screens I just can't understand why it's needed to make those scrollbars so narrow.

Yeah seriously. Like I am okay with them auto hiding when the mouse is away, but nowadays, even when you're mousing over them, they're only like 3-4px wide. What kind of a mouse target is that?! Ridiculous.

For a while I was playing video games with a mouse that had a broken scroll wheel. Some games just don't even implement a scroll bar at all... So you have to hold down the arrow keys to go through each item. So infuriating.

So, to tl;dr the article: size does matter

I like the way GTK is doing it. You have a thin scrollbar that is overlayed over the content and has no background (so just the knob) but when you get near it with the mouse, the background appears and it becomes double as thick. That way you're not wasting any space but you don't have this issue of it being hard to use either.

X buttons are another problem, light grey and fucken 10% opacity on a white background and the target is right in the middle of the intersect.

Even using pc all day I can't click a scroll bar on the first time!