This should a warning to all over-enthusiastic designers/developers on the Internet. Please stop creating custom scrollbars. Web browsers already provide wonderful scrollbars.
Do you really think discouraging enthusiastic designers and developers from building innovative things that push the boundaries of what's possible with browsers is the way forward?
... for the sake of preserving the status quo of default scrollbars, no less?
Yes. The same way I would discourage an enthusiastic designer from building a car with the brake pedal on the right and the gas on the left.
The idea might be good -- most people are right-handed and might have better response times with their right leg when it's straighter. But there's too much inertia in the current convention, and the change can't be made incrementally without creating serious risks.
In my years as a Flash developer, I built many custom scrollbars: each more painstaking than the last. Why build something guaranteed to be lower in quality than something else that's been in place for years? Let the professionals innovate.
The demo needs a background with a clearer pattern so you can see the path actually being followed. With just text and the dark background it just seems like a slideshow with transitions.
At the moment, the background isn't actually being scrolled at all. If I were to apply a patterned background to the element that gets scrolled around, I'd have to increase its size so that the screen always stays inside of it. I'm also not sure how a background image would affect the performance of the rotations.
1) JQuery scrolling this could be neat opens web page
2) OK, lets see this in action. Hits page down That seemed normal. Hits page down again Half the text of this part is outside the view port. Page down again Oh, now its all in frame. I don't really see whats going on here though. Hits page down again, nothing happens Well this is a bust. I can see you, little faux-scrollbar, why can't I go down and see the rest of the document. Clicks on scrollbar to drag it, nothing happens What the fuck little scrollbar? Refreshes page Hey, little scrollbar, you're working now!
3) lynx http://joelb.me/scrollpath/ Wow, much, much, better. Simple, and so much faster to read all the content (the entire page fits into an 80x26 terminal)!
Since I have the DNT+ extension installed on Chrome 17 / OS X, the message reads, "Feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can also be a kind person and tweet this."
Works great with Chrome 17 on Snow Leopard using my magic mouse, pc mouse with scroll wheel, magic track pad, and keyboard arrows.
The 2 fingered back/forward gestures are instead used for horizontal scrolling (right or down progress further down the page, left or up move back up the page)
Very neat. Not at all iPad friendly. Jerky at best when you click the individual numbers and no scroll or gesture seems to get you going from one part to the next.
this has interesting possiblities. but i consider it broken unless/until it supports scrolling with the spacebar, like ever other web page. fyi, i'm on firefox 11 osx.
on FF and Chrome nightly (and possibly others), click-holding the wheel and dragging is pretty broken or doesn't work at all. it's cool but not very usable, IMO.
Some breakages:
* PageUp and PageDown doesn't work.
* Home and End doesn't work.
* Long-clicking the scrollbar doesn't work A: Should react immediately, not on mouseup.
* Long-clicking the scrollbar doesn't work B: Should rapidfire (like with holding down PageDown).
* Middle-clicking the scroll wheel doesn't bring up the analog-ish scroller floater.
(Using Chrome on Win7)