Yeah, that was the first one my eyes went to. The only scenarios I can think of where it is acceptable to hide scrollbars are infinite canvases where you’ll draw your own non-linear ones (and even then be disappointed because they can’t look or behave natively), and things like maps where you remap scrolling to zoom and might want to use a backing invisible scroll area for that rather than consuming scroll events (which are somewhat more limited).
In short: unless the native scroll bar will be wrong, do not under any circumstances hide it.
Sure. I was thinking of fairly narrow cases, not ordinary page scrolling:
- A swipe/drag carousel with visible arrows or dots, especially a looping carousel where the native scrollbar does not represent a meaningful start and end
- An accordion or expanding panel that animates to reveal all of its content. During the transition, its intermediate height may briefly produce a scrollbar (and a visual flash), even though the fully expanded state does not need one
- Highly visual or experimental interfaces where scrolling is communicated through another control, or where the scrollable area is decorative and scrolling is not required to access the content
Only time I've seen that work is when making a carousel. Once you're using scroll snap it's already not going to behave the way you'd expect a scrollable container to, so having a different indicator doesn't feel so egregious to me.
Yeah, that was the first one my eyes went to. The only scenarios I can think of where it is acceptable to hide scrollbars are infinite canvases where you’ll draw your own non-linear ones (and even then be disappointed because they can’t look or behave natively), and things like maps where you remap scrolling to zoom and might want to use a backing invisible scroll area for that rather than consuming scroll events (which are somewhat more limited).
In short: unless the native scroll bar will be wrong, do not under any circumstances hide it.
If you mean the "Hide scrollbars" note, I agree 100% (:
There are a few specific situations where it can be useful, but I added the caveat precisely because it’s generally not a good practice.
>There are a few specific situations where it can be useful
re scrollbars, Can you give an example?
An online game for example.
Sure. I was thinking of fairly narrow cases, not ordinary page scrolling:
- A swipe/drag carousel with visible arrows or dots, especially a looping carousel where the native scrollbar does not represent a meaningful start and end
- An accordion or expanding panel that animates to reveal all of its content. During the transition, its intermediate height may briefly produce a scrollbar (and a visual flash), even though the fully expanded state does not need one
- Highly visual or experimental interfaces where scrolling is communicated through another control, or where the scrollable area is decorative and scrolling is not required to access the content
Only time I've seen that work is when making a carousel. Once you're using scroll snap it's already not going to behave the way you'd expect a scrollable container to, so having a different indicator doesn't feel so egregious to me.