Forums Feature Suggestions tinted editbox during scrollback

Hello,

In normal channels, when you scroll up from the most recent message, you can play a sound on every new message, or none. If you want to review the buffer, then the sounds might be frequent, or you'll miss the arrival of messages entirely.

A third option should be available or default, to present a visual indication of whether the buffer is scrolled to the end.

One possibility is to "tint" the editbox of the channel when the buffer is scrolled up. A color could be selected in the "mIRC colors" dialog (Alt-K), or computed algorithmicly based on the normal editbox color.

Other possibilities are an overlay or tinted field on one edge or a 4th color in the switch bar. What are your opinions? Would you be interested in mock-up screenshots of the options I described? Do you know any further possibilities, and do you have screenshots of them?

I like this idea. It's usually non-obvious that the scrollbar is not at the bottom. Tinting might work, though you could also overlay an icon at the right edge of the editbox with an up arrow or something. I feel like I've seen something similar in another application, before. There is likely some UX precedent here.

I like that.

I like the tint because it doesn't interfere with writing, if you are composing a message with the scrollbar scrolled; it isn't distracting from the rest of the display; but it is extremely obvious, and you can notice it at a glance. An icon would be similar if it was big enough, but it's rare that the entire editbox would be hidden. Perhaps the option could be offered of which edge to tint, or tint the titlebar, scrollbar, or borders, or where and what icon to use.

Here is a graphics formula for computing a tint from a base color.

http://home.comcast.net/~castironpi-misc/autotint.1324282474.png

I spent some time tuning the formula, so the normal foreground color would usually still be visible, but it also works with dark, light, or colored window background colors. For saturation 's' and luminosity 'l' of the colors represented in HSL color space:


Roughly speaking, saturation is dimmed * 1 / 3rd, and luminosity is dimmed towards 50% by +/- 0.15.

You also have to take into account screen saturation and contrast, as well as viewing angle. You can drastically change saturation on the screen by tilting an LCD monitor even a few degrees. Also, assistive devices can set high contrast colour schemes that would either not display any difference in the eidtbox or make it completely unusable (it might be changed to match the text colour). An icon would always be visible regardless of colour settings.

You might need to make an exception for a monochrome display, where you'd actually have to invert the colors. Otherwise, a setting for the ratio or increment for adjustment, or an additional entry in the mIRC Colors dialog, or just using the colors for highlighted text, would solve the concerns you identified.

Many applications use modes in either their input interface or their graphical output. The problem is that the mode already exists in mIRC, and there is no display to indicate it. Most applications don't have a special behavior when a scrollbar is scrolled to the bottom, so the problem might not appear in other places.

An icon or color change in the switchbar or treebar is still a possibility. An icon in the editbox might interfere with text you compose while the window is scrolled up. Only showing the icon if the window is scrolled and the editbox is empty is a possibility, but if text is left in the editbox, the feature becomes useless. Perhaps the editbox could be horizontally shrunk by 5-10 pixels while the window is scrolled to display the icon in that location.