About the little scrollbar arrows...

Uncle Tony wrote:

If Apple can give us the option to hide or display the scroll bars, is there a good reason that they can't give us the option to hide or display the scroll bar arrows?

That is something only they can tell us or address (or not) in a future update. Or you can tell them your concerns at

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

In my case, I prefer using the scroll wheel on a PC-style mouse for vertical scrolling, so I tend to use that instead of interacting with scroll bars directly. There are still two problems if you go that way...

The default scroll wheel acceleration on the Apple mouse driver is pretty poor - the scrolling is much too slow with slow scroll wheel movements and there is no way to change this in the mouse preferences. I had to buy a different mouse that comes with a more flexible driver (from Microsoft, ironically). After doing that, I am pretty happy with how vertical scrolling works in most apps that I use.

When I edit a wide spreadsheet in Excel and need to scroll both horizontally and vertically, I can use the scroll wheel for the vertical scrolling, but it is very inconvenient to not have the scroll arrows on the horizontal scroll bar.

I suspect Apple's motivation for the "no arrows" change was that the arrows are not needed due to the two-finger gesture on the trackpad. I think it is very presumptive of Apple to assume that everyone prefers using the trackpad.

The scroll ball of my apple mouse wasn´t working well and now OS X Lion takes away the scroll arrows, so it´s been a couple of frustrating months for me, so I had to buy a horrible looking Genius mouse since Apple doesn´t want to give us the scroll arrows back. It´s working fine for vertical scrolling but still is uncomfortable for horizontal scrolling, besides how ugly it looks next to my Imac.

I just don´t have the money right now to get a magic mouse and even if I could, I don´t think is fare that Apple expects us to buy one just because they made this inconsiderate "move forward".

goldangit, haven't they fixed this YET?

Message to Apple: you trip people up when you move stuff around.

Not everybody's using a touchpad gesture.

I just got a new iMac and find lots to like in Lion. But the absence of scroll bar arrows is highly annoying.

The presence of scroll bar arrows is HIGHLY annoying.

CT wrote:

The presence of scroll bar arrows is HIGHLY annoying.

How so? Since Lion doesn't have them, they can hardly be annoying you. Seems like your post was only intended to annoy others who'd like the OPTION to turn them back on.

And by way of comparison, on the LEFT we have the advanced feature-rich sidebar menu from Snow Leopard, with usability aids such as COLOUR, SCROLLBARS and SCROLLBAR ARROWS...

on the right we have the degraded feature-poor sidebar menu from Lion, with poor visibility and reduced usability. You can say you prefer Lion if you want, but for me the more advanced GUI is clearly Snow Leopard's.

Indeed, my guess is if you asked anyone completey unfamiliar with Mac OS which of these, the left or the right, was a screenshot from the latest upgrade, they would all pick the one on the left. The one on the right looks like something from 1999. 😟

[**nb. for the sake of accuracy, and before the pedants kick in, the green highlighting on the left is not part of the SL window, but was added to highlight the apps folder for a query in a different thread.]

Message was edited by: soft water (added comment)

Not when you really need them!

I'm right there with you, we need the arrows back - I can swallow the monochromatic change but the SCROLL ARROWS are vital - in everything. I have my most trouble in e-mail just trying to quickly flip back for an email I remember - the little bar will whip me back a year so I do do the page up page down but that is really not as helpful as clicking through. And yes one can search but sometimes one can not pinpoint nor remember the exact word or subject or phrase - clicking is the only way.

Has there been anything else regarding if the arrows will be back or not? There were several discussions going on and it looks like they have taken them all down on here.

Thank you for the sidebar comparisons. I find it hard to believe that Apple thinks that the monochrome looks better. For my older eyes, the color helps a lot ... the monochrome is hard. I keep hoping someone will come up with a hack to restore the color.

There is one website that I frequent where the two-finger scroll does not work. If I couldn't turn the scrollbars on, I'd be sunk.

Options Apple OPTIONS! I want the CHOICE of how the GUI works and looks ... not your for-reiched ein-kultur!

Give your feedback to Apple. They won't see it here. It's a user to user forum. There are plenty of hacks around to return colour and I'm sure someone will come up with one for the arrows. I missed them at first. Forgotten about them now after seven months and new buyers in the market have never even seen them, yet Lion sales continue to soar.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

Just adding another voice of support! The loss of the scroll arrows is by far the SINGLE WORST thing about Lion. I went straight from Tiger to Lion, and what a shock! As a scientific writer and editor, I routinely have to scroll through Word documents and PDFs that are several hundred pages long, and the lack of arrows is greatly reducing my productivity. As others have noted, it really looks like Apple no longer cares about people who are trying to use Macs to do serious work.