Ubuntu’s Overlay Scrollbars Get Updated – Here’s How To Upgrade in Oneiric

By , Published December 8, 2011

An updated version of Ubuntu’s ‘Overlay Scrollbar’s’ has landed in Ubuntu 12.04 – and is available for Ubuntu 11.10 users to install.

What’s new?

  • Improved thumb appearance
  • The proximity area (which reveals the scroolbar) has been extended to cover the entire window edge
  • New thumb positioning according to mouse pointer and bar position.
  • The thumb is more freely movable while touching an edge.
  • For fine-scroll mode press Control while dragging
  • Press Control while doing page up/down to do step up/down instead.
  • Jumping is now triggered via Middle Click or via Shift + Button1.
  • Other tweaks, fixes, and small performance improvements
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPQqgjD4Z4

Ubuntu 11.10 users can upgrade their scrollbars using by adding the following PPA to their Software Sources then upgrade using the Update Manager.

ppa:ayatana-scrollbar-team/release

Thanks to WarriorIng64 

Related posts:

  1. New Overlay Scrollbar Changes available in PPA for Oneiric users
  2. Overlay Scrollbars get first improvements for Ubuntu 11.10 [Video]
  3. Mimic the look of Ubuntu’s Overlay-scrollbars in Chrome/ium
Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
  • http://nkien.com/ Nguyen Kien

    it’s support for xul apps?

    • Zaid Abdulla

      XUL has to support the overlay scrollbar, not the other way around.

      • Yi Sun-sin

        Ok, let’s put it your way. Has Canonical yet patched XUL to make it use overlay scrollbar ?

    • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk

      There is no scrollbar, only XUL

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GE4EYP3QOQ246PLG2Y2DOD2NIQ Dr. Fly

        XD

  • Anonymous

    LinuxMint 12 Lisa doesn’t have the Ubuntu scrollbars. When adding this PPA, will they takeover the old scrollbars in Mint 12?

    • http://twitter.com/tehhanz Hans Heintze

      they should replace regular scrollbars.

  • http://mohoho.de Kai Mast

    Still doesn’t reveal when coming from outside the window :/

    • http://profiles.google.com/gaspo.m Martin Gašparek

      cos there is window resize grab area. I think its ok like this.

  • http://profiles.google.com/nathanlee2 nathan lee

    It’s hard for me to like overlay scrollbars when they aren’t in my most-used applications. When it comes to usability, consistency is far more important than nifty design.

    • José Antonio

      One of the things that I would like to have in fedora it’s the overlay scrollbars, they worked perfectly for me in ubuntu, it might not work in all apps but it works well…

      • Anonymous

        Why should every one follow the “ubuntu way”?

        • José Antonio

          it’s not about follow, I think that in order to do this, they just need to add the liboverlay to the repos and link it with it’s correct dependencies, which wouldn’t be too difficult for the devs, if that’s the case. I’m not saying to mimic the “ubuntu way” by it’s default configuration, but since this would be  kind of easy for the devs to sort out, more options are always welcomed, again as an extra.

          PS – I think I’m going to try to get the overlay scrollbars in fedora :P

          • Chris Coulson

             It also relies on a patch to GTK

          • José Antonio

            :(

    • https://launchpad.net/~cwd-simpson Carl

      Maybe if the new design work for “Web” works out to make Epiphany a compelling browser, this will be less of a problem.

      That still leaves (as usual) LibreOffice as a big source of inconsistency on the desktop, mind you.

      The GNOME project itself has been flirting with overlay scrollbars, but with all that bad blood don’t expect them to work with Canonical on it anyway.

      • https://login.ubuntu.com/+id/R4szkb7 Jo-Erlend Schinstad

        What bad blood are you referring to?

  • http://profiles.google.com/lilianftp Moraru Lilian

    Why the article with Marlin was deleted?

  • Nightmare

    Requires installation of untrusted packages

    The action would require the installation of packages from not authenticated sources.

    • Ian Santopietro

      Make sure you’ve added the ppa and its GPG key.

      • Anonymous

        What happened with the automatic GPG key fetching that used to be present in Ubuntu 11.04?

        • http://hoellp.myopenid.com/ HoellP

          Nothing happened to it, why would you think that? It works just fine.

        • Anonymous

          Turns out it just stopped working correctly on your system.

          • http://fitch.myopenid.com/ mikeru

            On my system, it works with ‘add-apt-repository’ from the terminal.

            It does not fetch the GPG keys automatically from the “Software Sources” GUI however.

          • Anonymous

            It also doesn’t grab it automatically for me, very damn annoying to have to update via terminal because i have 1 or 2 PPA’s because i can’t remember the apt command for adding a repo exactly every time.

        • Darin .

          This stopped working for me after the upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10. I figured it might’ve been something I did, but I wonder if more people have had this problem.

    • Joseph Kane

      I’m getting the same error even though I have the GPG key

    • Joseph Kane

      I solved the problem by uninstalling synaptic package manager. this automatically removes the synaptic’s update manager, which I assume was interfering with Ubuntu Software Center’s update manager

  • http://feathertail.dreamwidth.org/ Tachyon Feathertail

    Whoo! So are the scrollbars actually going to show up when you mouse over them, instead of showing up to the side and then making you dance the cursor on top of them? :P

  • Anonymous

    The traditional rectangle shape isn’t really a necessity now that it is automatically hidden. I wonder if a circle, oval or similar shape would make it look like it fits better. I get the impression this was created and implemented for touch screens, so when you think about it, an oval is probably is more appropriate….

    • Anonymous

      And they should move it back inside of the window it is scrolling like it is when maximized. It doesn’t look right on the outside IMO.

      • Anonymous

        But I like that they are trying something new.

        • Anonymous

          I talk to myself a lot.

    • Satchit Bhogle

      Touch screens wouldn’t need a scrollbar you could grip. You could just slide your finger over the content.

  • ldrn

    Oh, that looks ni— 

    ….

    Wait. Are they seriously taking ctrl+pgup and pgdown away from changing tabs and remapping it to move the scrollbar the same way pressing up and down do? 

    • http://hoellp.myopenid.com/ HoellP

      No, they’re not. It means Ctrl + the buttons on the thumb.

      • ldrn

        Oh, thank goodness. I’m *so* glad it turns out I can’t read. 

        … 

        … well, I mean, considering the alternative. ;) Thanks!

  • Anonymous

    I just don’t get the point of this overlay scrollbars. I removed this horror as soon as I installed 11.04. It’s one of the most silly things ever developed and it feels like it’s been made for the sake of doing something new.

    • http://profiles.google.com/nathanlee2 nathan lee

      The point -  your window is less visually cluttered than they would be with standard scroll bars.

      Also, because they’re colored, it’s a little easier to see than the regular greyish scroll bars (though because they’re smaller, they’re not distracting from the window).

      You might still not like them for whatever reason, but that’s the rational as I understand it.

      • Anonymous

        As far as I remember and unless it changed: overlay scrollbars are invisible until you hover them. So the visibility through colour argument doesn’t work for me indeed.

        And let’s be honest: in the current theme I am using (Radiance) the scrollbar merely use 0.5 % of my screen-width. So, it may be useful for tablets, netbooks and phones, not for my desktop usage at least.

        • http://shiba89.wordpress.com/ Shiba

          Wrong, they’re always visible. Moreover they do smooth scroll, something I just love.

  • Anonymous

    I wish it got ported to Qt and XUL apps. I use it, most notably, with Geany, and it’s incredibly handy to have. I miss it in firefox/thunderbird and KDE/Qt stuff though :(
    I like this new update, so I hope it gets into those two kits sometime soon.

  • Ozgur Aksu

    My issue with the Overlay Scrollbars is that I lose the ability to jump to a particular section. i.e. Very large document loads and I know the content is roughly around the 3rd of the way down. I don’t want to grab the scroll and try to smooth scroll through all of the content. Rather I want to jump to about the 3rd and then scroll up/down to my particular section. Does this make sense?

 
News