djvelleman@amherst.bitnet (01/04/91)
OK, you've got a document in a window with a scroll bar. My question is: How far should the document scroll? When the user scrolls all the way to the end of the document, where should the last line of the document be in the window-- at the bottom of the window, or at the top? Most programs seem to stop scrolling when the last line reaches the bottom of the window. Microsoft Word scrolls until it goes off the top. The first option seems more natural at first, but it has some definite disadvantages. Suppose the user wants to edit the last paragraph of a long document. He scrolls to the end, and under option 1 the paragraph he wants to edit appears at the bottom of the window. Now he starts adding something new to the middle of the paragraph, and immediately the bottom of the paragraph disappears off the bottom of the screen. If he wants to see the whole para- graph while he's editing it, he has to keep scrolling. Wouldn't it be easier for him if he could scroll until the paragraph was in the MIDDLE of the window, with white space below it? There's also a sticky point in option 1 when the user resizes a window. Suppose the window is fairly small, and the user has scrolled to the end of the document--i.e., the last line is at the bottom of the window. Now the user enlarges the window. Should the application scroll the document so the last line moves to the new location of the bottom of the window? Some applica- tions do this, but it seems a little strange to me for resizing to cause scrolling. The other option is to do what the Finder does: Leave the bottom of the document where it was, which is now in the middle of the window rather than at the bottom. If the user scrolls so the bottom of the document moves down to the bottom of the window, readjust the scroll bar maximum to prevent him from scrolling back. This seems a little strange--why allow the user to position the document a certain way by resizing, but prevent the user from achieving the same positioning with the scroll bar? Is there an "official" position on this? The only statements I could find in the user interface guidelines in IM which seemed relevant are: "Sizing a window doesn't change the position of the top left corner of the window over the document..." (IM-I p. 47.) "If a document has a fixed size, and the user scrolls to the right or bottom edge of the document, the application displays a gray background between the edge of the document and the window frame." (IM-I p. 48.) What do people think about this? Enquiring minds want to know. Dan Velleman Math Dept. Amherst College Bitnet: djvelleman@amherst
gourdol@imag.imag.fr (Gourdol Arnaud) (01/07/91)
Hi, Here are according to me the behavior to follow : 1) When the scroll bar is set to the bottom, the last paragraph of the document should appear at the bottom of the window 2) When the user wants to add some text to the end of this last paragraph the window should scroll so that the new text keeps visible. This feature, known as auto-scrolling, is implemented even by Microsoft. 3) When the window is resized, if the last paragraph was at the bottom of the window, it should remain at the bottom of the window (thus some portions of the text above are revealed). If the last paragraph was not visible, the portion of the text below should appear. 4) When there is a BAD THING or NOT STANDARD or VERY UGLY to do, please follow Microsoft. If you want to do really Macintosh programs, please follow MacWrite 4.6, MacPaint 1 and 2, and MacDraw 1.9.5 and II. Microsoft programs are not good examples, neither is HyperCard. Arnaud.