1998 not only had the best scrollbar, but the best UI overall. Shoulda just stopped then and we would have utopia by now
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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I'd say 2001 and 2006 purely because the scrollbar is textured in a way that make it seem dragable at first glance |=|.
Which is standard by now but still, besides that 1998 has all the other visual cues to denote what's clickable and i would otherwise agree as i generally prefer flatter designs.
I miss my big chonky scroll bars. now they hide them.
Search for "Always show scroll bars" in settings
that'd be helpful if they were wider than 5px.
I'm in my 50s with macular degeneration so seeing small things can be difficult.
Yeah they're not great in that regard. Still, i'd expect a setting in accessibility to help with this. I'm not near a computer now but i'll look next time
It never got better than 1998
1988 has the best contrast, I like that.
1988 was just peak ui design
I hate the modern ones you need to hover above so they even display, and then it's 1 pixel wide and a shade of grey that's about 2% darker than white.
Less functional and 500 lines of js garbage.
It's a few lines of css, no JS required.
.my-div:hover {
overflow-x: scroll;
}
And the look and feel of the scrollbar is generally determined by the browser/OS. Unless someone does a custom scrollbar implementation, but that is exceedingly rare. So that thin rounded gray bar is a browser/OS design, again, without any JS.
If these kids could read, they would be very upset!
You can style the native scrollbars with css now
Oh, interesting, that's pretty new. Technically it's not an official part of the W3C spec yet, but it's close enough that browsers support it now. Though, it only allows you to control the bar color, track color (which is generally invisible nowadays, so track color changes nothing), and width. So, yes, more customization than was there before, but still extremely minimal.
I don't know about scrollbars specifically, but apparently a lot of windows 11 is written in react
It’s the start menu that’s written in react.
And Microsoft Store. And the weather. And also in that edition that literally just launches a browser into a remote machine, they decided to make the Ctrl + Alt + Del menu also a browser. For some reason.
Ew
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1998 was truly the best time. When all OS widgets looked the same. And could be used in apps, and everything had a consistent look. Yeah you could override this in your app. But fuck people who did that. Everything looked so nice and uniform and you knew what to expect from a widget and its look and behavior. Get off my lawn.
That reminds me.
Haven't whipped my llama's ass in a while.
I like how they added some grip between 2001 - 2009 so you would have some traction when you used then
My cursor kept slipping off them all the time anyway 😢
Now you can't even find the fucking thing when you need it. Thanks, "UX design".
UX, whatsat?
Also, it completely disappears after a second.
And why is it a different color on the addons page anyway??
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imho the clustered version of the scroll bar buttons (like in Amiga Workbench 2.0+, Macintosh OS, macOS, KDE) make way more sense to me (minimal mouse movement to change scroll direction) than this spread out layout.
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2012? Elder? Cmon, it wasn't that long ago... wait... no...
1998 was in my formative years with computers, so I will always be partial to it. Xfce can get pretty close.
Honestly I’m partial to it as well. Possibly for the same reasons, but also because the bar and buttons are clearly defined and have good contrast. The later designs begin to fade out until now the scroll bar is just a thin line, which is sometimes hidden, so you don’t see it unless you’re looking for it.
I love how 1998 looks. It is clean and servers the purpose. 2001-2009 feel over designed, 1988 and 2012 not sure whether the dark part is the scroller or the light part lol.
To me, they are just indicators of how much content I can expect. I scroll with the mouse wheel or using the page down/up keys. I don't grab the thing. I only need to see the indicator when I am scrolling.
But I wonder whether there is a accesibility aspect to always visible and wide scrollbars. I think, the best way to deal with it, is to make it an option how they look and behave.
What about some scrollable window with something like 10k+ lines, though? Sure, if you have a mouse with a free-spinning function, it's still doable, but a draggable scrollbar comes in handy then.
Maybe a smart way to handle that would be to show a wide scrollbar when there is so much content? Idk.
I would probably expect filters that are always visible regardless at which line I am currently. Sadly, this isn't the case very often and I have to go back to the top and apply the filters.
Touchscreens don't have wheels on them. Styluses/pens also don't (usually). The latter usually acts more as a mouse than a touchscreen in software, so you can't scroll by dragging the page.
We peaked in 2009
What was wrong with the high contrast of 1988?
It is at home in both light and dark mode
My only criticism is lack of affordance on the slider. Is the dark part the slider or the light part? Some of the newer ones have the little ridges for "traction".
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Now: I
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2020
Definitely either 88 or 98. Large, very visible, no bullshit. I prefer 98, but would also be perfectly happy with 88. The reason I like 98 better than 88 is because 98, while not as high of contrast, is closer to if it's physically there, with shadows and stuff, and therefore visually faster recognizable as a scroll bar, it's more intuitive.
Give me 98 with the little lines of the next 3. I think it enhances noticeability quite a lot without adding a distracting amount of contrast
Agree. 98 with grip would be my ideal.
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By 2026 AI does the scrolling for you, a feature made mandatory (all scrollbars removed) in 2028 😭
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Do you remember the feel of switching from 1998 to 2001? It felt like stepping into the future.
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