About the little scrollbar arrows...

rick wintomac wrote:

petermac level 3 proves the point that counter-innovation is inevitable and will be defended by its authors. aggregate productivity will always progress at the smallest increment if it improves at all, as equilibrium is a more rigid law than gravity.

how about those sroll bar arrows?

Appreciate the transcript and it's progressively more positive approach to returning the scroll bar arrows that were left out of the core system of Lion. Words are powerful things, as too are Apple, so I wish you adieu in your quest to find them hidden.

But as rossCantChangeAfterYouCreatYourAccount (wonderfully original name by the way) has so clearly pointed out

I'd accept a CMD/CTRL click option, but I suspect most applications have already overloaded them.

Assuming OSX Lion is still using a version of the X-Windows system for GUI display, the scroll bar arrows are a function of the window manager which implements the capability, catches the mouse events and forwards them onto the application to scroll up/down one row.

So... it's just a patch to the window manager... probabably un-commenting out the lines of code that used to implement this function. This isn't rocket science........................................................................ ....

So thanks for you marvellous and intellectually hybrid approach to a Forum Topic that you failed to mention.

Good Luck

Pete

I hope everyone who's responded to this and the other Missing Arrows/Scroll Bar Forum chats; has also filed Complaints with the powers that be @ Apple... This fact that they've blundered and left out such an insanely, intuitively obvious mechanism for navigating item by item in MacMAIL Alone, should be cause to get a patch built for either General Preferences, or Mail; or very likely, many of us will likely pay MICROSOFT for Outlook for Mac, given those folks are smart enough to recognize the business/enterprise user's Main productivity tool and even quasi-Database tool is Mail.

I was Blown Away in a negative way; when I did the upgrade to Lion; only seconds later, needing to find a Sent Email from yesterday; that was probably 30-40 emails down that Sent box; and found myself totally baffled, befuzzled and flumoxed at the fact, that I could NOT simply scroll down my Sent emails, without instantly going into a hyper-roll down out days/weeks/months! of emails! NOOOOOO I only wanted to find the single note, sent 24 hours before; to RESEND IT! Are you kidding?? Something so basic, so fundamental, so stupid simple that a 5th grader should have insisted it be a key/core function; and now, no capability.

And, IF they were more OPEN Source minded; we'd already have a Coder or 2 offering some third party, Free Widget/Gadget we could all download and FIX this problem, OR Is it Really Apple's clever way to attempt to drive every one of us into a touch screen navigation model, and screw the rest of the masses that have grown up on click to scrowl devices??

Stop the insanity Apple; get real and get the Arrow/Scrowl Bar's back to the way they were; and sorry Pete, it makes no sense as other say; to downgrade; when I will loose email by being FORCE Upgraded If I want to keep the pleasure of Mail after June 30, when all SnowLeopard users have to migrate up; or risk loosing @mac.com or @me.com mail services... So much for Apple being Business/Enterprise tools of choice...

Looking @ the Microsoft Suite for Mac now; since I'd skeptical, since their has been over a year's worth of bantering on this topic, and apparently, NO move by Apple to offer up a FIX... So, seems like there's really No Apple monitoring on this topic of merit, just a place for ****** off folks like me to Rant.

I've now tried a couple of ways to bring back the precision I need when I'm navigating large documents. Neither approaches brought back the scroll arrows but at least I'm not getting too frustrated any more.

The first approach was with a Microsoft mouse. Using the Intellipoint software, which runs in the System Prefs, I was able to set it up so that the scroll wheel would make single-line scrolls vertically and in large spreadsheets I could scroll single columns horizontally. That was perhaps the best result I found for precise navigation of very big documents on my 30-inch Cinema Display.

The second approach was with Apple's Magic Mouse. I was keen to try that because, being an Apple product I assumed it must somehow be designed to work best with their current operating system. I'm using that now and it is okay for what I need. You do have to be careful though because it is extremely senstive and I often find the documents swishing around the screen unintented. But with a bit of care it does the job. One small warning: if you had previously run the Microsoft Intellipoint software like I had done then you need to uninstall it before using a Magic Mouse, because otherwise you are unable to get the right version of the mouse panel in the System Prefs.

I know I'm not helping anyone get their scroll arrows back and I can't say how well either of these mice will help in all circumstances, but maybe trying a different mouse, like I did, will help some of the folks here.

mdavidsydney wrote:

The first approach was with a Microsoft mouse.

The second approach was with Apple's Magic Mouse.

May I suggest trying out with a suitable Logitech mouse? I have two MX Revolutions, which were outstanding but appear to have been discontinued. However, and for purposes of this thread, their "hyper-fast scrolling" technology is what concerns us for precision scroll work. The scrollwheel they use is hefty, giving you excellent feel. It has a mechanism that engages a very fine stepped clicker with adjustable resolution giving you extraordinary precison. When you need a fast scroll, the clicker disengages, the scrollwheel spins free and the weight allows it to fly to the ends of the lists. As for mousing, they now have something called Dark Field Tracking that allows the laser beam to work even on glass or shiny surfaces; this I have not experienced since it was developed after my mice came out. Their top-of-the-line Performance Mouse MX incorporates all of the above, others might too.

As for software, their Logitech Control Center unifies all functions (mice, pointers, keyboards, etc.) and offers extensive customization, button by button (the Performance MX has 7) both globally as well as in a per-application basis.

I have now gone back to Snow Leopard on 3 different Macs I use because of the lack of the arrows in the scrollbars. I can't see why it is such an issue for Apple not to include the option of allowing users to turn this feature on and off - rather than simply eliminating it entirely! I mean the code-base difference between 10.6.8 (with the arrows) and 10.7 (without) surely is not that significant.

I am actually surprised by Apple's seemingly intransigent attitude on this, because they go out of their way to provide options for people in many other areas of the OS - including accessibility.

So, come on Apple...please bring back the arrows in the scrollbars!!

And if Apple won't do it - is there anyone out there that can provide an extension or system hack that can get us our beloved arrows back!

If there was a hack I'm sure it would have been posted over the last ten months. You can always cross your fingers that Apple may return the feature in Mountain Lion, but my money won't be going on it.

Cheers

Pete

I had this question, too, and was extremely frustrated at how difficult it was to navigate pages without the little arrows, as the scroll bar alone moves the pages too much - wanted the scroll bar arrows back to move pages incrementally. I FINALLY figured out that if I use the up/down arrow KEYS on my keyboard, pages will move incrementally (just a little bit at a time). Hope that helps some of you out there who have also been missing the scroll bar arrows.

This is just sad.

I went into the local Apple store and the kids on the staff don't even know _how_ to use scrollbar arrows

Nor have a clue why anyone would bother.

Every time they tried to show me something -- always -- they'd use a touchpad gesture.

And I'd say, no, I'm handicapped, I use an ergonomic keyboard and ergonomic mouse.

On a computer.

On a desktop.

You know? Not an ipad. Not an iphone.

Blame it on the carpal tunnel surgery.

And -- they'd be stuck.

No clue.

What every Mac user did up until this past year is suddenly ancient history.

I find that using either a older "little ball on top wired" apple mouse or my little laptop logitech "wired" scroll wheel mouse works great. very slow scrolling of pages line by line. I have my wacom on rte right hand my mouse on the left and the combination is very effective.

Forget it! Apple is not going back and as you can see form ankhank's experience the new generation is used to something else. Progress or not that is the way it is. We either adapt or die.

I remember when OX10 came around and I complained a lot about how strange it was, blah, blah, system 9, blah, blah! Know what I mean?

> We either adapt or die.

That used to be true. But then the ADA was passed.

Apple has tried to comply with the law.

Apple did quite well with the Macintosh for disabled people who needed particular help with the interface.

Someone in Apple's design-for-sales department decided their preferred customers already got rid of their Macintosh computer, and thinks Apple is only selling to people who own an iPhone and an iPad.

Eventually someone in the human interface group will point out that some people can't adapt and want to keep using the Macintosh. They'll decide to support their "legacy customers."

The company will either adapt or die.

I'm in the exact same situation: Wacom user, lots of CS software where arrows used to be really helpful, baffled at this change. Worse, at work I don't have the option of downgrading to Snow Leopard. So, I came up with a somewhat cumbersome solution for it that, though not ideal, allows me to precise scroll up and down while not removing my hand from the Wacom pen.

What I did was go to System Preferences, then adjust the Wacom buttons to execute a custom keystroke. You can choose any keystroke you want, so I assigned an up arrow to one and a down arrow to the other.

It works. Again, far from ideal, because, one, the Wacom pen buttons are not really placed in a way that I would click them when naturally holding the pen. Two, because you may already use your buttons for something else. Lucky that I didn't.

Good luck.

Oh, goody, now we have a legitimate reason for ditching the Mighty Mouse and getting a zillion-button Logitech replacement. Note that the Logitech Control Center configuration software lets you remap all of the buttons and scrollers on a global or a per-application basis. And some models have Turbo-Scroll buttons framing the scrollwheel that can be remapped just great for scrollbar arrow substitution.

yeah, thats at the heart of it. try different mouses or wacom tablets all you want, the apple controllers simply aren't a good substitute for the simplicity of its earlier design which gravely degrades the whole person to computer relationship.

theres a shame on you apple.

there a top ten list of good mouse substitutes that mayhaps alleviate the need for the larger scrollbars?

With all the posts about the missing arrows, has anybody heard from Apple? Do they even read these discussions?

I guess we all will have to think IOS and start gesturing with the many fingered flips, what about people with disabilities who have limited control of their fingers?

No they do not respond here, may not even read anything here. Also the amount of posts here is increadibley minimal compared to the amount of Mac users in the world. Only a few that don't like their removal post here. Personally I have forgotten all about them since it will be getting on to a year soon since they disappeared. If they haven't come back in that time then unfortunately I wouldn't be holding my breath.

Good Luck

Pete