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by toddmorey·2y ago·view on hn ↗
Yeah so interesting that with 96 focus areas proposed, scrollbar styling made it to the final set of 16.

Would be curious to know what 80 things were deemed less important than dinking with how scrollbars look. Maybe it was just an easier area to create a win? Maybe there are some benefits of styling a scrollbar that I'm not thinking about? Something that makes it a little easier to emulate native OS behaviors with web technologies, perhaps? Has this ever been a must-have feature on a project anyone has worked on?

1 comments
> Has this ever been a must-have feature on a project anyone has worked on?

I have a highly interactive web app which simultaneously displays tens of panels each with it's own scrollbar. It's vital that they are thin and match the web app styling.

We don't have the same definition for "vital".
Good UX demands the correct distribution of visual weight. If a design requires many scrollbars, and those scrollbars have static styles, than those scrollbars dictate the visual weight of the rest of the app. This can make it impossible to design a nice intuitive UI around. So vital can definitely be an appropriate description for certain UIs
Normal width scrollbars use way too much space. This is a professional app with a complex dense UI, similar to ones used by image editors, music production software, 3d modelers. All of these use non-native controls, since native ones are too "wasteful"
Do you mind sharing the identity of the app? I am curious to see how/what you customized.