Raymond Chen, an experienced software engineer from Microsoft, has once again voiced his criticism. He expressed regret that the classic Windows scrollbar, which he calls the 'Win32 scrollbar,' is rarely used anymore.
In an article published this week, Chen recalled that early versions of Windows featured a functional yet simple scrollbar. This element consisted of a scrollbar, arrows on the sides, and the thumb itself, which could move both horizontally and vertically. This screen scrolling implementation was also present in other older operating systems, such as AmigaOS and Lisa OS.
However, the scrollbar that evoked nostalgia in Chen was introduced in Windows 2000 and subsequently used in later versions of the system. This was because this scrollbar had a context menu that appears when right-clicking on it. By default, this menu displays specific functions.
These operations can also be performed using a mouse or keyboard by using arrow keys or keys like PgUp or PgDn. The context menu serves as an alternative shortcut. But there is a 'special' function in this menu that apparently prompted Chen to write this article: the 'Scroll here' function, which moves the screen to the position where the right mouse button was clicked when opening the menu.
Chen notes: 'It is much more convenient if you need to scroll a long distance because you don't have to select the scrollbar thumb and drag it to the desired location; you can focus only on where you want to go, not where you came from.'
Raymond Chen also mentioned a feature he recently discovered: if you click on the scroll area while holding Shift, the content will jump directly to the click point. In standard mode, without Shift, clicking this area only scrolls one page forward or backward.
Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, this feature is hardly used. It can be found, for example, in Windows 10 Notepad. In Windows 11, it can be found in classic interface tools such as Control Panel.
The reason for Chen's regret is that he considers the Win32 scrollbar very useful, but it has been replaced by 'frameworks that provide their own customizable scrollbars.' This is happening not only within the Microsoft ecosystem but also in third-party software.
Current scrollbars look better, but according to Raymond, they are less functional. Unsurprisingly, he concludes his post with words like: 'Great, when I finally find a keyboard shortcut for the scrollbar (Shift + click), the ecosystem will be so fragmented that I won't even be sure it will work.'