Re: Suppress scroll bars - an idea

Mike Batchelor (mikebat@clark.net)
Mon, 3 Jul 1995 07:54:40 -0400 (EDT)

Walter Ian Kaye once wrote...
>
> At 12:48p 07/02/95, Mike Batchelor wrote:
> >Walter Ian Kaye once wrote...
> >>
> >> At 11:05p 07/01/95, Mike Batchelor wrote:
> >> >I have a suggestion for another style attribute: no-scrollbars. I don't
> >> >know about any of you, but I find it tiresome to use a scrollbar on a long
> >> >
> >> >Any comments?
> >>
> >>
> >> Re "no-scrollbars": No way, no how, nu-uh. Bad bad bad.
> >
> >Why why why. Flat declarations do little to illuminate your thinking.
>
> 1. Scrollbars are platform-specific, HTML is platform-independent.
> 2. Use (or non-use) of scrollbars is a personal preference.
> 3. Page size is platform-specific, so there is no way your page
> could know whether it fits on a given screen (and even if it
> did, HTML does not have if/then/else programming constructs.
> 4. Not all keyboards have page up/down keys. See item 1.
> 5. You would give a Macintosh user a heart attack. See item 1.

Ummmm.... Then perhaps I have misunderstood the <style> tag. I thought
this was a place where the author could offer presentation suggestions,
which the browser could implement, if it can, or if it was appropriate for
the platform. Obviously, to-scroll-or-not-to-scroll has no meaning for a
text-to-speech browser, and probably for lots of other applications.

All I was suggesting was a way for an author to suggest to the browser
that it should paginate the document, rather than scroll it, if the
document was too long to fit on a single screen.

-- 
 %%%%%% mikebat@clark.net %%%%%% http://www.clark.net/pub/mikebat/www/ %%%%%%
"[IBM] ... has often been criticized by customers for its inability to supply
systems in a timely fashion, but >>Ozzie Osborne<<, general manager of IBM's  
commercial desktop systems ... says recent enhancements ... are beginning
to pay off..." [emphasis added] _Information Week_, May 22, 1995, page 26