Developers: If you find yourself contemplating the implementation of custom scroll bars for any reason whatsoever, please take a cold shower instead. Thank you.
1. SAP. No keyboard control, unintuitive response rate. 2. Google Wave. Ditto, plus buggy behavior as well. 3. Some random Flash site where the scroll bar tab didn't even move when you scrolled down.
- Stephen Mack
I can't think of any site or app where novel scroll bar design was anything other than a misfeature. The native UI has ~seven scroll bar behaviors, and custom designs always forget at least one of them. Trust me, users will NOT appreciate the creativity of your design.
- Stephen Mack
Reminds me of those OMG EXTREEEEEEEEEME overclocking and system monitoring tools that came with some motherboards that had all kinds of Doom/Quake-like crap flying out of the entirely customized window. It looked goofy and dumb.
- Akiva Moskovitz
OMG Wave's scrollbars are teh sux0r. I detest Google's scrollbars in general, but these make me think they hate people.
- Admiral Anika
The Google Wave one especially makes NO SENSE.
- joey
Akiva, I bet those apps were outsourced and the developers charged by the line. Anika, Joey: Agreed -- Google Wave's scroll bars seem to exist solely to make you appreciate the native scrollbars so much more. Who spent the time implementing that real-time shadow? Was there nothing more productive for that developer to do instead?
- Stephen Mack
amen to that! don't break standard browser controls!!!!
- .LAG liked that
Pretty much applies to all default controls of the operating systems...
- Jemm
Full disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Wave. I'm usually completely on board with the idea that we should leave native scrollbars alone, but before you assume that they were reimplemented just for fun, consider the problem they're trying to solve: Native scrollbars do not handle arbitrarily long scrollable areas well. Take a gigantic document and drag a native scrollbar one...
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- Joel Webber
I have yet to see a good reason for a custom scrollbar. I especially hate Adobe's custom scrollbars in web apps, for the reasons cited above.
- Brian Johns
Stephen, apparently that was more important than allowing users to remove themselves from a wave or delete a wave ;)
- joey
Luckily you can remove yourself from Google Wave by simply not using it. Google Wave is basically a research project, just like demos at SIGCHI. Don't confuse it with a real product. (Yes, it is possible to use it for communication, but you could also use the two paper cups with string attached my cousins made last week)
- Cristo
I fully admit that Wave has a lot of details that remain to be ironed out, but it's completely unreasonable to call it "not a real product". I use it in my day to day work very heavily, and couldn't survive without it. Our team is highly distributed, and Wave has really helped us keep long complex discussions from turning into email clusterfscks. Which they usually did in the past.
- Joel Webber
Cristo, your cousins sure are innovative ;)
- joey
Joel, I'm quite certain that you could survive without it. Highly distributed teams have been rumored to exist for years before Google Wave was even conceived.
- Cristo
Thanks, Cristo. I really needed an extra dose of pedantry today. I'm absolutely certain you're right to suggest that the problems of distributed teams are perfectly solved, so no new tool could possibly improve the situation. I and my team must be hallucinating to think it's helping us at all.
- Joel Webber
Joel, I think Cristo was pointing out that your use of the phrase "couldn't survive without it" may be a touch hyperbolic. :) You may not be as productive, but he is arguing that you would still exist as a team of living beings.
- Stephen Mack
Joel, thanks for providing the rationale behind why Wave is reimplementing scrollbars. My main concerns are: 1. I'm used to being able to use the arrow keys to scroll. But when in a wave but not editing, the arrow keys do nothing. Same for Home and End. (Fortunately Page Up and Page Down do work, but that's not enough.) 2. The scroll widget is always the same size, so you can't tell how...
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- Stephen Mack
I don't think anyone would complain if the scroll bars were replaced with something better. From what I've seen, this is not better.
- pitlord
If it's any consolation, negative reaction to the scroll bars in Google Wave have distracted everyone from how much they dislike Flash custom scroll bars. (I just typo'd that as "scroll barfs." How fitting.)
- Stephen Mack
@Stephen: 1. The arrow keys here is that they (along with home/end) are used to move among blips, which one could argue is the closest corollary to the "line by line" one would normally associate with up/down arrow keys. 2. When you're dragging, the shadow is the proportional part, rather than the widget itself. This avoids the problem in traditional scroll bars, where the...
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- Joel Webber
BTW, please don't assume I mean to be the great defender of all that is perfect about Wave's scrollbars. I only intend to help explain what I perceive as a legitimate problem they're trying to solve. I'm certain they're a lot that still needs be tweaked about them.
- Joel Webber
Joel, thanks for the explanations. For 1, you're right, arrow keys are working for me now. (I had trouble previously.) So that's great. For 2, I don't see that at all -- the height of the shadow grows/shrinks seemingly based on velocity and then achieves a maximum height, but as far as I can tell unrelated to what's visible on the screen. 3. I would never have guessed that, but sorry,...
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- Stephen Mack
won't the pubhubbubsubdubtublubzub guys be all like "Hey, screw RSSCloud, put our shit in instead!"?
- Mark
I don't think so. I think we all want realtime realtime. That would deprive us of realtime-ness and would be illogical and counter-productive and non-sensical. Could never happen.
- Dave Winer
Doesn't reader support Hubbub already anyway?
- Jalada
I hope they support both - regardless, it would be a huge win for real-time.
- Jesse Stay
I don't see it happening any time soon but it would be nice.
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
Amazon has done a nice job of solving this on the Kindle iPhone app by introducing a rotate lock on the lower right. http://www.taptaptap.com/blog... Apple should add that on Safari.
- Mike Doeff
You might be innovative — but are you awesome? For most, the answer is: no. Game over: in the 21st century, if you’re merely innovative, prepare to be disrupted by awesomeness. - http://davemorin.tumblr.com/post...
I left Twitter for Jaiku. Then Jaiku left me for Google. I moved in with Pownce but it died. I went back to Twitter, but flirted with Plurk, Identica, and Rejaw, and even tried doing it myself with Laconica but it was Twitter I really loved. Twitter finally broke my heart so I left it for Friendfeed. Now Friendfeed is leaving me for Facebook. No...
It reads better than Soap - my roadmap is very similar but I'll forgive FF and live happily ever after with it (for the time being, anyway)
- Nicholas Paul Gordon
from iPhone
You're the best Leo. Canadians are the funniest people.
- Dan Lessard
I'm betting they'll slowly digest it into the Facebook news feed. They claim that Friendfeed is staying put for now, but that won't last.
- Ken Bauer
And we keep following Leo all over the place!
- Robert Scoble
When will we all get in a long term relationship and stop getting our hearts broken?
- Nate Pilling
so what is more important, the medium or the people, hope that FF will let us export our content, and our social netork :) (in my wild dreams)
- abdellah
Need ice cream? I'm new to FF, and kind of sad I didn't jump on the proverbial wagon sooner!
- Elizabeth K. Barone
I hope you leave your standard breadcrumbs so we can find you in the next chapter of social interaction.
- jcunwired
Feels to me like maybe it's time to go back to building a distributed network, rather than hopping from service to service.
- Ken Sheppardson
But where to next? That's the question. Wave sounds great, but the implementation will be a PAIN. So where? Oh LeoMoses...where is our path in the desert?
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Sounds like a hurtin' country song in the making.
- Bill Rodman
Well you can't say that what is happening in the 'social sphere' is boring by any means!
- Matt Cassem
I think Leo's audience is more likely to click "Like" or "comment" than Scoble's is. When Leo and Rob are both posting on FF, Leo gets more likes and comments
- Mark
Didn't you leave a post earlier saying how funny it was that people complain anytime there's a change (referring to the FF buyout)? This sounds like a complaint to me.
- Fleagle
Not complaining - just thinking about the future. I think a little Friendfeed DNA will vastly improve Facebook. And I think Facebook is already the big winner with the general populace. I also think we geeks need a corner somewhere else to hang out in.
- Leo Laporte
And I have no plans to leave Friendfeed. Yet.
- Leo Laporte
I feel more of a personal connection with the FriendFeed team than I have with other services I've left, and that will be a big part of why I will stay as long as possible.
- Louis Gray
^^^ replace "team" with "community" and there's my reason for sticking it out.
- jcunwired
Its also going to take a very long time to go through content and bookmark/store it elsewhere. Evernote is going to be used heavily in the weeks to come.
- jcunwired
The only way to have control is to use your own URL
- Craig Shipp
Wait till you meet Facebook's randy cousin Overly Friendly Book =)
- Cynthia Yildirim
what Louis gray said. I'm going to hang around until the lights go out.
- Jordan Brock
from BuddyFeed
What they said, I don't see any reason to leave FriendFeed unless something actually changes that makes the service worthless to me.
- Craig B.
And many times you cheated Twitter, she was always loyal to you. Thats mean someting!
- Jacque
from f2p
yup me too Louis and I don't know any of them
- Thomas Power
Users today are investors too - only the 'exit' for us is not lucrative.... its the other way sometimes :)
- Mrinal Desai
I just had the idea: wow, how good will Faceboook become though this input? (JUST imagine tagging ppl in FB the way U can Tag them in FF.)
- oliver gassner
I agree with Jonathan Hardesty "It's like the internet version of Days of Our Lives" - And sites keep getting killed off only to come back to life a month later!
- Amy Flynn
very true, however on the other hand, we are getting closer to that one service which everyone will be on... and I dont think twitter is going to be that one
- Bryce Campbell
Facebook buying FriendFeed is like having to MOVE just when you got your house all dressed up and made into a comfy HOME! I don't feel like doing it again!
- Arleen Boyd
Now that Facebook and Friendfeed have married, I'm waiting for Twitfacefeedplebospacening.
- Anthony Marco
Leo, u by your self made two companies (services) out of 3 famous and made Google interested enough to buy 2 of them (Jaiku & FF). Google also tried to flirt with Twitter as well. So which one u choose now? Cause we will follow u :P
- Sam Ehsan
Sounds like some of my past love affairs. Of course, I'm married now. That, um, was prior.
- Paul Chaney
Feeling a bit worn around the edges? ... me too!
- Susan Beebe
from iPhone
Speaking of Days Of Our Lives: Didn't that show jump the shark when the serial killer was unmasked as Marlena (a character I used to have a mad crush on, and who's now mostly a professional victim)? Then all the "killed" characters came back to life, since they were only what I call "soap opera dead"...
- Dennis Jernberg
And if everyone follows you, then your all having affairs all over the place! LOL
- Sandra Large
I think it's back to the TWiT Army!
- Paul Salzman
It's not like we have proposed Healthcare reform, or anything really important, going on in the U.S.A.
- Steve de Mena
yep. welcome to another episode of; As the Stomach Turns. one big soap opera.
- Scratch5150
I've decided I'm not going to tell ANYONE which site I'm favoring... not even myself! I swear! As soon as I decided that FF was my new place (a couple months ago) THIS happens! It's like magic, but in a bad bad way...
- Mark It's 2000-Oh-1-Oh J
Why do we all assume this is a bad thing? Maybe the FF Facebook combo will be better??
- Craig Shipp
Maybe they'll keep both open -- FF is the open side, and FB is the closed side.
- John Flinchbaugh
from IM
I know exactly how you feel. What's a person to do? I am mad at Twitter for suspending some of my accounts. First, the accounts kept causing the password to reset, then they were suspended, all around the time of the DOS attacks. All I ever used Twitter for was to advertise my businesses, and for fun. Now I don't know where to go.
- DogPatch
It's like my beloved Archie comics romantic twists from childhood! Archie loves Veronica who loves Reggie who loves Betty who loves Archie... ;)
- Shawn Zehnder Lea
한글 와서~ 루거 .. 당신은 정말 잘 생기고있다 누드 사진 기다리다 :]
- HealingBrush
One of the funniest sad stories I've heard in a long time...
- Aviva Gabriel
Gotta find one who is a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom. One who looks like a woman, but thinks like a man. One who tells you you're the only person in their world and worships the ground you walk on. One who's from Venus but want's to live on Mars. One who you know will always be there even when the chips are down. One who looks like a movie star, but doesn't bust the credit...
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- Jan Simmonds
I think a lot of people LOVE to think negatively and don't want to think positively. They think FB is BAD and will ruin FF, but I think if they do it well, FB won't be the bad guy. I think most people who are irked about this are irked because they think the FFers "sold out" to the "man".
- Molly, Time Traveller
@Mollyanna - I disagree. I am irked because the future of FF is completely uncertain. It's more likely that FB will let FF flounder and close it down than it is that FB will invest time and resources in maintaining and enhancing FF. FB has other interests and is splitting up the FF dev team. That does not bode well for FF. I don't begrudge the FF devs for taking the money. I would be...
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- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Leo, I hope you mention FriendFeed in your Dubai TED talk ! :) I'll try to be there !
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
@ian - "Wordsmith. Public relations undergraduate at The University of Texas. Feminist Capitalist. WordPress geek. Future commercial rights attorney"...surely that kind of asinine comment is beneath you!
- Jan Simmonds