Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this “natural” scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.
I’ve been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered…how many of you folks prefer this method?
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Trackpads and touchscreens get the phone way of scrolling.
These feel like you are interacting with a piece of paper, so you move the paper around.Mousewheels get the traditional way of scrolling.
Mice are more like controlling something.
It just is. Like F1-F12 keys are always F1-F12 keys, not the alt-function (like media/brightness etc).I hate that Apple has called it “natural” Vs “reverse” in some psychological reconfiguring that you are going against the grain if you don’t agree with them (as opposed to them changing the established standard).
Good points all around, though I do use my alt-functions more than the function itself.
I use natural on the trackpad and traditional using a mouse.
It’s a good thing Apple doesn’t make cars. They’d put the gas pedal on the left just to be different, and claim it’s more “natural” that way.
Don’t give Tesla any ideas.
Yeah, they would probably let you pay a small fee per month for this feature.
My absolute biggest complaint with my BMW. The electronic gear shifter. Want to go backwards? Push the shifter forward. Want to go forwards? Pull the shifter backwards. Fucking genius! <\s>
Isn’t that somewhat accepted like with sequential transmissions pushing forward downshifts and pulling back upshifts
I never remember which one is natural and which one is reverse. When I use a mouse or a trackpad, I am moving the scroll bar. When I am using a touch screen, I am moving the content.
That makes sense and is probably the best no-nonsense rationale I’ve seen yet.
my idea is that when I scroll on the mouse, the bottom part of the scroll wheel touches the content
This makes sense to me too. The way I have always viewed it is that if you were to lay the mouse wheel on the screen itself, it would behave the way as if it were interacting physically.
“Natural” only seems natural if you were raised mostly on touchscreen devices, I’ve never seen a desktop have inverted scroll like that.
On a side note, Why do so many Linux programs not support auto scrolling by default if at all?
I didn’t even know autoscroll was the name of middle clicking to scroll were your mouse went until I switched to Linux and noticed it missing in certain places.
I think it is because of Unix/X11 tradition of the middle mouse button being for pasting the most recently selected text.
I think the only place I’ve ever seen autoscrolling available was Libre Office, and I turned it off there because nothing else has it.
Firefox does too, but iirc it has to be enabled in about:config.
And fortunately for me, Firefox is the main place I want to use autoscrolling. It’s nice for reading long articles, or browsing lemmy threads… (I’m trying to think of other places I might want autoscroll. I don’t recall ever wanting to use autoscroll on a file browser or a settings window or anything like that. It would be good on a pdf reader though.)
i can’t even grasp how one can reads while the page autoscrolls down. When I had tried it I could only think about whether the scrolling speed is the absolutely optimal and if I make it on time or if it scrolls faster or slower than I read. Of course I couldn’t understand what I was reading since my mind was not paying attention at what I was reading, since it was occupied with the logistics.
For me it’s only useful with Firefox and the monitor running at 144Hz/fps. I used it for long webcomics, where constant scrolling is good enough to read the few lines. But otherwise I’m also not using it much.
Not in about:config, there is a setting in the normal preferences for that.
The nyxt browser also supports autoscrolling, but it isn’t activated by a middle-click.
There is nothing natural about “natural scrolling”.
It feels like gaslighting.
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I view it as controlling the scroll bar rather than the content. Down moves the bar down. Up moves the bar up.
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Natural is totally unnatural.
Traditional with mice, natural with touchpads.
Interesting story, I used traditional scrolling with touchpads all my life until I spent three years exclusively using a desktop. Came out of it suddenly rewired to scroll like I do on my phone.
Real gangstas also switch their PGUP and PGDN keys to natural scrolling.
Easy there Satan
You meant traditional or the wrong way. There’s nothing natural about it.
I use traditional scrolling for everything except touch screens.
Traditional for both scroll wheels and trackpads (trackpads are emulating a mouse, you heathers!) And inverted Y for gaming.
I think trackpads emulating a mouse should be considered a poor implementation, a trackpad is different than a mouse and we should utilize that with the design. A trackpad is best imo when combined with gestures, almost as a hybrid between a typical touchscreen and mouse. For example pinching motions, two/three finger tapping, two handed use, etc are all options for a trackpad that don’t work (or work poorly) on a mouse.
I used to play games with both inverted X and Y. But lately (last 10-15 years) inverted X was often not an option so I had to force myself to play both axis non-inverted. It took a few months but it feels natural now.
I consider trackpads to emulate the touch of the screen (so like a phone). So natural scrolling for me.
I hate how natural is called natural cuz there’s nothing natural about it, when using a touchpad or mouse you’re controlling the viewport, mouse down should move the viewport down
Seems to be a common thing in the UX design world to give your ideas very humanist or comfy sounding names. I get the intention to make change sound less threatening but it gives off very cult-like vibes to me.
But I ain’t a designer by any means, I looked into abit of UX design/philosophy and was turned off by all the buzzwords and seeming lack of discussion around what users actually want.
I hate how natural is called natural cuz there’s nothing natural about it
It’s all Apple propaganda to make their way more justified to their Apple fanbois.
I think it’s because of touchscreens since that behavior on a touchscreen more accurately emulates physically manipulating the items in the screen.
Traditional for everything, mouse or touchpad, natural scrolling fcks with my brain
Traditional all the way. “Natural” is not right.
Traditional. I imagine the mouse wheel on top of the screen, as if the wheel scrolls the screen content
