Scrollbars. Ever heard of them? They’re pretty cool. Click and drag on a scrollbar and you can move content around in a scrollable content pane. I love that shit. Every day I am scrolling on my computer, all day long. But the scrollbars are getting smaller and this is increasingly becoming a problem. I would show you screenshots but they’re so small that even screenshotting them is hard to do. And people keep making them even smaller, hiding them away, its like they don’t want you to scroll! “Ah”, they say, “that’s what the scroll wheel is for”. My friend, not everyone can use a scroll wheel or a swipe up touch screen. And me, a happy scroll-wheeler, even I would like to quickly jump around some time.

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Scrollbars are becoming smaller and less usable, causing difficulties for individuals with fine motor control problems or inaccurate pointing devices. The trend of shrinking scrollbars persists, with limited user-configurable options to fix them. Different software, such as GTK, Qt, Firefox, Chrome, and Electron, have their own challenges when it comes to scrollbar customization. One potential solution that is well-received is the use of minimaps.

Scrollbars are becoming a problem

Eh, scrollbars started becoming a mess when we gained the ability to access the internet on any device imaginable. Hell, I can scroll Safari on my watch now if I really want to. Scrollbars being small is far from the only problem with them. And honestly, I can’t even fault people for designing software with a certain level of tech literacy in mind.
There’s already a million considerations you have to make when writing a UI. And it’s already hard designing a UI that tech-literate users can easily use. There’s only so much designers can do.
Anyway, let’s focus on making the internet NOT a pile of adware-filled crap. Then maybe we can talk about scrollbars.

This is just one of the problems based on a missing standard for overall design choices.
Some people like light themes, and others like dark themes.
Some like minimal designs with a lot of whitespace, while others want all the information visible at all times.
And some people want to express themselves through their cool design ideas, which are sadly not compatible with tools like screen readers.
If all websites looked and worked the same, it would be much easier for everyone, but that’s not what the default human wants.
I think it would be great if there were a common API that allowed anyone to set design preferences on the OS level.
This configuration would then have to be available for every application.
I mean, we are already pretty much there with the light/dark theme preference.
However, that could be improved by properly defining worldwide standards for other settings, such as a full-color palette or a set of scrollbar options.
Of course, this would make it much harder for the application designers, though, because they would have to consider all of the configurable option combinations all the time.
But I don’t think there is a good and easy solution.

As a average coder, I can say I personally dont need the scrollbar at all. Of course I understand that some people need them. Maybe there should be an accessability option for big scrollbars in every software/os/de.