Scrolling moves the content
Well, what else did you expect it to move?
The kitchen sink?On a touch screen, this movement is natural because you’re interacting with the content on the screen, not the view.
For a mouse, where you’re likely navigating multiple views across different windows, you’re manipulating the view instead of the content and in that context “natural” is an improper term to describe the motion.
It depends entirely on the convention of the environment.
My work computers have been Macs exclusively for about 8 years, and the scroll wheel on my gaming PC feels weird now.
This sometimes reminds me of the “invert Y-axis” for camera controls in video games, where someone’s preference can basically determined by the question “Are you old enough to have played the original MS Flight Simulator as a child?”.
Someone’s preference typically reflects their tactile experiences that they made with their hardware early on, and once something feels “right”, there’s usually no convincing them it’s not (and indeed no point to it). It’s an artificial thing you have to get used to, one way or another, and there’s really no right or wrong way to go about it.
Maybe I’m weird, but for me it’s always non-invert for look controls, but as soon as I’m in a plane or ship it must be invert.
This is default in most modern games.
The imagine I have in my head to somehow relate to how inverted-y axis makes sense is that “normal” mouse movement you use the mouse to point where you want the nose to go, mouse goes up, nose goes up. While inverted controls a little stick poking right out of the back of the head, move the stick/mouse up, and you’ll tilt the head down. Doesn’t take into account inverted x movement though 😄
I think it was in Halo’s tutorial where they ask you to look up, and whatever up or down movement you did on the stick would be considered up. So whatever first impulse you had of pushing the stick up or down would become the looking up direction. Pretty clever.
I prefer the direction apple doesn’t call “natural” and I don’t appreciate the implication my preference is “unnatural” because of it.
The whole point is that people have different mental models of these things.
I was using a trackpad before I’d ever owned a device with touchscreen, and so my concept for trackpad is based on mouse:
- Moving the cursor with a finger is like moving a mouse on the desk - movement agrees with direction
- Scrolling is like treating the trackpad as a ‘virtual mouse wheel’ - towards you moves the content up.
And as for why I think a mouse wheel itself should behave like that? It’s because my mental model of the mouse wheel from the beginning was that it’s a literal physical cog like a roller pressed “against” the view content - and so when the top of the roller moves down the underside of the roller moves the content up.
All the people who grew up with phones will insist my preference is wrong and freaky and I don’t blame them because I think theirs is.
There’s no actual wrong or right here, just whatever collection of mental models built up since childhood our life paths caused us to form.
- Moving the cursor with a finger is like moving a mouse on the desk - movement agrees with direction
This is where I am as well. I think of scroll direction as the way I move the “camera”. The direction of the wheel is the direction of the frame.
We arrived at the same conclusion, but for different reasons!
You see the wheel as moving the viewport directly (wheel down = view down)
I see the underside of the wheel as pushing the page/document/etc upwards (wheel down = content up)
Same preference but the mental model is different. Which is fine, and is really my exact point :)
This is why I’m a big fan of always giving options in games etc to invert the controls, and invert x and y independently and all that. You might think “what freak wants this crazy setup?” but SOMEBODY wants it, and if you can give the option then why not! Sometimes the freak might be you.
In ancient times when planes had a simple stick for controls, you pull back to go up and push forward to go down.
If you scroll UK, should the scrollbar go up? Or should the page go up?
If you scroll UK they end up near Iceland
Do you still have to drive on the left when driving the UK, or do nautical regulations override that?
