Question on best practices for scrollbar UI in a WinForm

[Bill Fuller]

We are building a multipane C# winform application with three panes. The
anchored left pane will be the menu, center pane data entry, and right pane
advisory information. The customer has requested there be only ONE scrollbar
per page. IOW, if the menu needs to scroll, it will use the single scrollbar
anchored on the right and all three panes will scroll. Same with the data
pane... meaning if it needs to scroll the menu pane will scroll out of site.

I am wondering if anyone has doen something like this and what your thoughts
are? Most applications I have seen, such as Microsoft Outlook, use separate
scroll bars per pane for this.

I would like thoughts on this approach (pro and con), including guestimatees
on level of difficulty.

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Bill,

Well, have you asked the customer what the reasoning behind this is? It
certainly DOESN'T seem to promote any kind of usability feature. Ask them
to justify the reasoning behind it. Just because they are the customer
doesn't mean that they are infallable.

 

[Bill Fuller]

He feels that multiple scrollbars are confusing to users and will result in
too many support calls.

Bill,

Well, have you asked the customer what the reasoning behind this is?
It certainly DOESN'T seem to promote any kind of usability feature. Ask
them to justify the reasoning behind it. Just because they are the
customer doesn't mean that they are infallable.


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

We are building a multipane C# winform application with three panes. The
anchored left pane will be the menu, center pane data entry, and right
pane advisory information. The customer has requested there be only ONE
scrollbar per page. IOW, if the menu needs to scroll, it will use the
single scrollbar anchored on the right and all three panes will scroll.
Same with the data pane... meaning if it needs to scroll the menu pane
will scroll out of site.

I am wondering if anyone has doen something like this and what your
thoughts are? Most applications I have seen, such as Microsoft Outlook,
use separate scroll bars per pane for this.

I would like thoughts on this approach (pro and con), including
guestimatees on level of difficulty.

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Bill,

Honestly, I think that's horrible thinking, and you really should ask
for something to back it up. This isn't to say that something new is a bad
thing, but there is a reason why individual windows have scroll bars
(instead of one massive scroll bar for everything).

However, if that's the way that you will ultimately go, then I would
place everything on a user control, then place that control in a container
which will expose the scroll bar. Of course, you have to treat your user
control like a document, increasing/decreasing its size as appropriate for
the content and notifying the container so it can adjust its scrollbars.

But I can't emphasize enough how bad this idea is. Of course, there
could be something revolutionary that this UI is doing which would make me
change my mind, but for something as simple as an explorer-like interface
(the tree view on the left, two panes on the right), I think it will just
serve to confuse people, and irritate them.

--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

He feels that multiple scrollbars are confusing to users and will result
in too many support calls.

Bill,

Well, have you asked the customer what the reasoning behind this is?
It certainly DOESN'T seem to promote any kind of usability feature. Ask
them to justify the reasoning behind it. Just because they are the
customer doesn't mean that they are infallable.


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

We are building a multipane C# winform application with three panes. The
anchored left pane will be the menu, center pane data entry, and right
pane advisory information. The customer has requested there be only ONE
scrollbar per page. IOW, if the menu needs to scroll, it will use the
single scrollbar anchored on the right and all three panes will scroll.
Same with the data pane... meaning if it needs to scroll the menu pane
will scroll out of site.

I am wondering if anyone has doen something like this and what your
thoughts are? Most applications I have seen, such as Microsoft Outlook,
use separate scroll bars per pane for this.

I would like thoughts on this approach (pro and con), including
guestimatees on level of difficulty.

 

[Peter Duniho]

[...]
But I can't emphasize enough how bad this idea is. Of course, there
could be something revolutionary that this UI is doing which would make
me
change my mind, but for something as simple as an explorer-like interface
(the tree view on the left, two panes on the right), I think it will just
serve to confuse people, and irritate them.

For what it's worth, this design is pretty much identical to an average
frameless web page that has lists of links or other multi-column content.
Those can work reasonably well, as long as it's clear to the user what's
going on.

In other words, I don't think the idea is fundamentally flawed. Though I
would agree that doing so should be carefully considered, with some
real-world data to back up the need. Web pages usually wind up that way
because it's too hard or complex to do it any other way. Those
limitations don't exist in a regular Windows application.

If the OP _does_ decide to proceed with the design, I'd agree that a
regular UserControl with the desired controls inside it is a more
desirable design. The requirement using this technique to resize the
contained controls according to the content is going to make the
implementation messy, but at least it will present a nice,
easy-to-understand interface to the user (as opposed to multiple
scrollable controls, each without their own scroll bar but all scrolling
in tandem with each other).

Pete

 

[Bill Fuller]

[...]
But I can't emphasize enough how bad this idea is. Of course, there
could be something revolutionary that this UI is doing which would make
me
change my mind, but for something as simple as an explorer-like interface
(the tree view on the left, two panes on the right), I think it will just
serve to confuse people, and irritate them.

For what it's worth, this design is pretty much identical to an average
frameless web page that has lists of links or other multi-column content.
Those can work reasonably well, as long as it's clear to the user what's
going on.

In other words, I don't think the idea is fundamentally flawed. Though I
would agree that doing so should be carefully considered, with some
real-world data to back up the need. Web pages usually wind up that way
because it's too hard or complex to do it any other way. Those
limitations don't exist in a regular Windows application.

If the OP _does_ decide to proceed with the design, I'd agree that a
regular UserControl with the desired controls inside it is a more
desirable design. The requirement using this technique to resize the
contained controls according to the content is going to make the
implementation messy, but at least it will present a nice,
easy-to-understand interface to the user (as opposed to multiple
scrollable controls, each without their own scroll bar but all scrolling
in tandem with each other).

Pete

I appreciate everyone's thoughtful response.

I do have one question, though... what is an "OP"?

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Bill,

OP = Original Poster. In this case, that would be you =)


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

[...]
But I can't emphasize enough how bad this idea is. Of course, there
could be something revolutionary that this UI is doing which would make
me
change my mind, but for something as simple as an explorer-like
interface
(the tree view on the left, two panes on the right), I think it will
just
serve to confuse people, and irritate them.

For what it's worth, this design is pretty much identical to an average
frameless web page that has lists of links or other multi-column content.
Those can work reasonably well, as long as it's clear to the user what's
going on.

In other words, I don't think the idea is fundamentally flawed. Though I
would agree that doing so should be carefully considered, with some
real-world data to back up the need. Web pages usually wind up that way
because it's too hard or complex to do it any other way. Those
limitations don't exist in a regular Windows application.

If the OP _does_ decide to proceed with the design, I'd agree that a
regular UserControl with the desired controls inside it is a more
desirable design. The requirement using this technique to resize the
contained controls according to the content is going to make the
implementation messy, but at least it will present a nice,
easy-to-understand interface to the user (as opposed to multiple
scrollable controls, each without their own scroll bar but all scrolling
in tandem with each other).

Pete

I appreciate everyone's thoughtful response.

I do have one question, though... what is an "OP"?

 

[Bill Fuller]

Well, I've been called worse: =)