GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 681286
Show overlaid scrollbars when a pointing device isn't present
Last modified: 2014-10-21 08:13:56 UTC
If there aren't any pointing devices (mouse, touchpad, etc) and there is a touchscreen, the standard scrollbars should be replaced with semi-transparent overlaid scrollbars. See the design page for more details: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Scrolling#Tentative_Design
One small clarification. I think mere presence isn't enough. What is more important is if the device is actually in use. We do similar things with showing the mouse cursor now.
A prototype can be found in bug 730730
Here is behaviors I'm seeing in firefox on OS X: - when a mouse is connected, show a traditional, permanent scrollbar - without a mouse, show a narrow, translucent indicator when scrolling is triggered with the touchpad or keynav (touchscreen too, I guess) - the indicator fades out after a bit of inactivity - when moving the pointer over the indicator (with the touchpad), the indicator grows wider, matching a regular scrollbar (still translucent) - as long as the pointer is over the translucent scrollbar, it stays up and can be used as a scrollbar - when plugging in a mouse, the permanent scrollbar appears on the first event from the device
I've pushed a prototype for this functionality to the wip/overlay-scrollbar branch
gtk3-demo's left-hand pane doesn't show any scrollbars, whether using touch or a touchpad. The overlay scroll works however. Is this related, or is it a theme bug?