The same person who managed to make the text and background color not clash will also be able handle two scrollbar colors responsibly. Take e.g. a textarea that gains focus and has the both scrollbar and border change color, what's so terrible about that?
No sarcasm, and that question wasn't rhetorical either: How is a scrollbar that different from other input elements within webpages that can already be styled?
And what do you mean by using non-default colors? User stylesheets would also include scrollbar colors anyway; do you mean just setting a background but no text color (assuming a default of black, which might not be black for the user)? Don't see how this could apply to this CSS property, since it takes two colors, you either set both or none.
It seems logical to me that if you can read the text on the web page, that is, if the web dev hasn't made the common mistake that renders the text unreadable, they will set the scrollbar colors to something of similar "quality". If you can't read the text because they use CSS badly, then the scrollbar color is the least of your worries. QED?
Generally speaking, there are a lot of "common webdev mistakes", like using the giant images and scaling them down, having text and background color very close together... but we don't take that away just because some abuse it, so resisting more flexibility on those grounds doesn't strike me as so "obvious" as people seem to agree it is. If you can allow websites to hide the mouse cursor, I don't think the web will break because of this CSS property. If you don't want to see it on any page, override it in your user stylesheet, done.
What do you mean, as well? That's the only bit you didn't ignore.. and it's useful for when you draw your own cursor in WebGL. I can't think of a single time I ever saw it abused, I guess I don't frequent the kind of website that would.
By "as well", I mean "as well as objecting to web devs being able to alter the appearance of browser controls".
Yes, I do see the usefulness of being able to do all of those things, but in practice, I don't appreciate it when it's done. I'm not saying that it's abusive (and I'm not talking about egregious misuse of these abilities), I'm just saying that I personally dislike it when sites do this sort of thing.
I fear that I've come off as too militant on these issues -- as a web dev, you should do what you deem best. As a user, if your choices are too annoying to me, I'll just avoid your site.
I think this whole thing just plays into a personal issue I have over the web these days... from a usability and aesthetic standpoint, the web has been noticeably declining for me over the past few years.
> I do see the usefulness of being able to do all of those things, but in practice, I don't appreciate it when it's done.
That I can certainly agree with. I also think users should be able to override and customize things... ideally, everybody gets more options? And user agents should absolutely be user agents, instead of brochure displays.
While design may be somewhat subjective, I also think websites are getting worse. If that's a "personal issue", we both have it :D Just the last one I just looked at, that made me think "why? who is this for?"
I just think marketing (and mobile?) play a much larger role in the downfall of the web and the rise of generic copy drowning in padding, than all the stuff we can do with CSS.
Those controls are not part of the content, they are part of the application or operating environment itself, and I have configured them the way that I want them.
As such, they should be off limits to web designer's whims.
As an aside, my experience with web sites over the years (particularly recently) doesn't exactly give me a great deal of confidence that they would make appropriate choices for the appearance of these controls.
> Those controls are not part of the content, they are part of the application or operating environment itself, and I have configured them the way that I want them.
Depends on the browser, but e.g. text area colors can be styled anyway (and therefore made unusable, how irresponsible that CSS allows for this), and whether scrollbars show up in the first place is CSS, too. You can override that with user stylesheets if you want, but no need to hardcode that for everybody.
> doesn't exactly give me a great deal of confidence that they would make appropriate choices for the appearance of these controls.
You're now the third person to say this, and the second to do so while ignoring what I responded to that point, so again:
If you can't read the text, why do you care about the scrollbar? If you can read the text, why do you worry about the scrollbar? In what conceivable practical scenario do you gain anything? The very same people who picked all the other colors might also color the scrollbar, but how is going to make a default scrollbar make an otherwise unusable site usable?
We can already hide scrollbars, but coloring them differently, that's a problem? I don't buy it, as they say. How is an ugly scrollbar, or one that uses the same color twice and is unusable that way, worse than none?
That's the point.. since you probably woulnd't argue for taking away background and text color, you already "trust" web devs with those. If a website is unreadable, the scrollbar doesn't matter. If it's readable, the scrollbar will look great, too. Also see other comment.
> That's the point.. since you probably woulnd't argue for taking away background and text color, you already "trust" web devs with those.
I would, reader modes are a godsend that revert the web back to how it should have always been, with the client controlling the text and background color in a way consistent with the rest of the system.
Content display should be up to the user, not the designer.
I never used them, but Opera had a few preset user stylesheets right there in the "view" menu at the top of the window, that was neat. One was "C64" IIRC. Silly, but neat ^^
If styleesheets could have placeholders for some system colors (maybe even fonts?), that could be something.. turn nightmode on/off, or just generally change colors, and all programs and all websites fade! I would actually love "having to" make 3 stylesheets, one super fancy one, a print stylesheet, and a "system colors" one. Or don't even stop with colors, do it like Magic User Interface on the Amiga, let the user configure how they want all sorts of input and information fields to be formatted and behave... some people want material design (they're wrong of course, but if they must be wrong, I want them to at least be wrong and happy, rather than wrong and unhappy), others want gradients and bevels and shadows everywhere, let everybody set it how they want. Some people want lots of padding, others want tight padding and negative linespacing and tiny fonts, etc.
Awww, now I'm super excited about something that doesn't exist... I can taste it, it would be so awesome! This is the wrong timeline :/
