Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this “natural” scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.
I’ve been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered…how many of you folks prefer this method?
I’m glad someone else feels opinionated about this! It seemed to me that everyone I come across these days only knows “Natural”!
Start realising that the way you’re used to scrolling with your mouse wheel, is a cog between you and the service it’s moving. Actually you were using natural all along. It was the early touch pads that were wrong and nonsense.
This! I use traditional with wheels and natural with touchpads
Only correct answer.
Traditional for everything, mouse or touchpad, natural scrolling fcks with my brain
I use both a pc and Mac, as well as my phone and I just get mixed up all the time. Gives me something to think about.
I use a rotary knob for scrolling since I don’t own a mouse
I think the reason Apple also went with natural scrolling for mice is because of their Magic Mouse which attempts to act like it’s a trackpad. The gestures are similar to how they are on their trackpads, so it’s consistent.
Touchscreens and trackpads? Natural scrolling all the way, we’re directly moving the content. It works the same as if your two fingers were click and dragging the content, it does feel pretty natural.
With a traditional mouse, I see the wheel as already inverting the movement: imagine the content is the mousepad, traditional mouse wheel direction scrolling down would be pushing the content under the mouse upward. Although I think the real reasoning is probably just either you’re controlling the scroll bar or the engineers just thought that’s what felt natural and intuitive to them at the time. It was probably born as basically just a more granular page up/down button that became a wheel.
Traditional all the way. “Natural” is not right.
Traditional for both scroll wheels and trackpads (trackpads are emulating a mouse, you heathers!) And inverted Y for gaming.
I consider trackpads to emulate the touch of the screen (so like a phone). So natural scrolling for me.
I used to use inverted Y, but it stopped feeling right at some point in the Xbox 360 era and I switched.
I think it was the first console gen where FPS really took off. Like there were FPS on PC for a long time before that, and Halo was pretty big on the Xbox, but the PS2 ones were all kind of clunky and experimental.
I think I only used inverted Y to start with because the only first person games I used to have were flight sims.
I think trackpads emulating a mouse should be considered a poor implementation, a trackpad is different than a mouse and we should utilize that with the design. A trackpad is best imo when combined with gestures, almost as a hybrid between a typical touchscreen and mouse. For example pinching motions, two/three finger tapping, two handed use, etc are all options for a trackpad that don’t work (or work poorly) on a mouse.
I used to play games with both inverted X and Y. But lately (last 10-15 years) inverted X was often not an option so I had to force myself to play both axis non-inverted. It took a few months but it feels natural now.
Inverted Y I get, but inverted X?
Explain yourself, weirdo.
That’s literally the same principle. And yes, before you ask, it’s dumb for both axes.
Up is up, down is down.
It’s not the same principle for both axes though. I invert just the Y-axis. For me, left is left, right is right, up is “back” and down is “forward”.
It is, if you consider the motion about the bottom part of the stick, when you push forward, that part moves backward. The same can be said about pushing right, and having the bottom going left.
Why would you want that? No idea, since even on planes the x axes are not inverted like that…
I see what you are saying about the bottom of the stick, but that isn’t the mental model of the people who invert the Y-axis. So that principle doesn’t really apply.
Consider it like plane controls. With the stick in a neutral position as pointing “up”. Left and right are still left and right. But forward and back tilt the nose, which is forward, down and up respectively.
Nah a touchpad feels more like a smartphone display than a mouse, so “natural” scrolling it is. Inverted Y for gaming too. I think it depends on what you grew up with - playstation and Xbox don’t use it per default but Nintendo (at least old consoles and games) does I think, so I cannot switch back to not inverted, it feels unnatural.
I noticed this in video games rather than on-screen text scrolling. Some of them had a weapon selection, but instead had mouse-wheel-down “decrease” the weapon slot, and mouse-wheel-up “increase” it. However, the game also used the mouse wheel for other things, thus changing it to my preference had some unexpected side effect.
In any case, mouse-wheel to scroll view works because of the mouse-pointer paradigm. Move both mouse-wheel and mouse in the same direction, and the pointer is further along the content. Move them in opposite directions, and the pointer tends to hold position relative to content.
I never remember which one is natural and which one is reverse. When I use a mouse or a trackpad, I am moving the scroll bar. When I am using a touch screen, I am moving the content.
That makes sense and is probably the best no-nonsense rationale I’ve seen yet.
my idea is that when I scroll on the mouse, the bottom part of the scroll wheel touches the content
This makes sense to me too. The way I have always viewed it is that if you were to lay the mouse wheel on the screen itself, it would behave the way as if it were interacting physically.
deleted by creator
I use traditional on my trackpad. I did get forced into natural scrolling on another device for a while and it wasn’t difficult to switch. But I’m not going out of my way to switch. A trackpad doesn’t have the same mental model as a touchscreen.
I agree, I’ve never gotten the idea that a trackpad is like a touchscreen, there’s a disconnect there that makes it feel like a pointing device to me. Maybe I’d feel different with one of those giant macbook trackpads, but I doubt it
Real gangstas also switch their PGUP and PGDN keys to natural scrolling.
Easy there Satan
Natural, but I use a touchpad.
Traditional on a mouse, natural on a touchpad. Any other way feels wrong to me.
The scroll wheel is attached to the roller of the scroll, that’s how I feel about it.
