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Parky · Mar 17, 2004, 03:10 AM

Can someone please tell me what the option "Use Smooth Scrolling" in System Preferences is supposed to do?

I have tried it both on and off and it makes no difference at all in any applications where I scroll (Safari, Word, etc).

Is it supposed to do the same as the smooth scroll option in IE for Windows?

Both my machines use Quartz and every other nice feature seems to work OK (Expose, etc).

Info or advice would be welcome.

Ian

moonmonkey · Mar 17, 2004, 04:35 AM

Originally posted by Parky:
Can someone please tell me what the option "Use Smooth Scrolling" in System Preferences is supposed to do?

I have tried it both on and off and it makes no difference at all in any applications where I scroll (Safari, Word, etc).

Is it supposed to do the same as the smooth scroll option in IE for Windows?

Both my machines use Quartz and every other nice feature seems to work OK (Expose, etc).

Info or advice would be welcome.

Ian

Try clicking on the scroll bar below or above the thumb, it smoothy scrolls to the place you click.

Parky · Mar 17, 2004, 04:39 AM

It does not work on my machines, it just jumps, no smooth scroll at all.

I have scrolling rather than jumping selected in Preferences as well as Smooth Scroll, but no joy.

Ian

tRr · Mar 17, 2004, 04:50 AM

I can see it when I press the page down key, but other then that it's a wash from me. I'm on pretty old equipment though.

Parky · Mar 17, 2004, 04:54 AM

I can now see it with the page up / down keys.

It's not exactly smooth though, it just shows you the move to the next page rather than it just popping up.

I think I prefer it without to be honest.

Ian

Horsepoo!!! · Mar 17, 2004, 06:38 AM

Originally posted by Parky:
I can now see it with the page up / down keys.

It's not exactly smooth though, it just shows you the move to the next page rather than it just popping up.

I think I prefer it without to be honest.

Ian

Me too...never been a fan of smooth-scrolling in Windows. People say Windows feels faster and OS X feels slow...blah blah blah...and those same people love smooth-scrolling which sure as hell makes scrolling feel slow and laggy.

Arkham_c · Mar 17, 2004, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by Parky:
I can now see it with the page up / down keys.

It's not exactly smooth though, it just shows you the move to the next page rather than it just popping up.

I think I prefer it without to be honest.

On my iBook I leave it off. On my G5, though, I leave it on. It may be a screen size thing, or a performance thing, but the big beefy machine smooth-scrolls really quickly, so it's not obtrusive there.

osiris · Mar 17, 2004, 11:32 AM

I think smooth scrolling is relative to system speed. The G5s are silky smooth, older G4s are jumpy even with a 64mb radeon.

Cadaver · Mar 18, 2004, 06:20 PM

Smooth as silk on my G5. Unusable on my two G3s.
I've never tried it on a G4, though I don't actually have access to a G4-based machine at the moment.

angelmb · Mar 19, 2004, 04:45 AM

I can not feel smoth scrolling with my M$ ice mouse :-/

Al 17"

WJMoore · Mar 19, 2004, 05:17 AM

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
On my iBook I leave it off. On my G5, though, I leave it on. It may be a screen size thing, or a performance thing, but the big beefy machine smooth-scrolls really quickly, so it's not obtrusive there.

That's interesting I have it on, on my G3 iBook but off on my iMac because I don't like it when I use the scroll on my mouse.

lenox · Mar 19, 2004, 09:27 AM

On my 800mhz imac at work, I can barely even notice it's on. This is probably due to the pixel response rate of the LCD monitor.

At home on my mdd tower, I can definitely notice it, however - it does feel a lot laggier than, say, any version of windows even on something as slow as a 400mhz p2 or celeron. Also, it says system-wide smooth scrolling, yet it only works in cocoa apps, which excludes the finder...which a lot of us are used to equating _with_ the system since the classic days.

Oh well.

Rickster · Mar 19, 2004, 05:43 PM

The system-wide "smooth scrolling" feature isn't really system-wide. It's implemented by the Cocoa frameworks, and it's set up to only be triggered if a scroll view's content is of a specific type: Safari or another WebKit-provided HTML view, a standard Cocoa text view, or Mail's message text view. (We had to work around this in order to use "smooth scrolling" in OmniWeb.) So you'll only see it in Cocoa applications, and even then you'll only see it in certain ones with certain kinds of scrolling documents. As far as I know, an equivalent feature hasn't been provided to Carbon developers, and even if it was, it'd likely not be the sort of thing existing apps get "for free"... so that's why you're not seeing it in Word.

And, as has been previously mentioned, it tends to prefer dropping frames over lengthening the animation time, so you may not be seeing it because your computer is slow or otherwise busy. I also notice it's a lot faster (smoother) on dual-processor machines.

angelmb · Mar 21, 2004, 07:40 AM

Originally posted by Rickster:
The system-wide "smooth scrolling" feature isn't really system-wide. It's implemented by the Cocoa frameworks, and it's set up to only be triggered if a scroll view's content is of a specific type: Safari or another WebKit-provided HTML view, a standard Cocoa text view, or Mail's message text view. (We had to work around this in order to use "smooth scrolling" in OmniWeb.) So you'll only see it in Cocoa applications, and even then you'll only see it in certain ones with certain kinds of scrolling documents. As far as I know, an equivalent feature hasn't been provided to Carbon developers, and even if it was, it'd likely not be the sort of thing existing apps get "for free"... so that's why you're not seeing it in Word.

And, as has been previously mentioned, it tends to prefer dropping frames over lengthening the animation time, so you may not be seeing it because your computer is slow or otherwise busy. I also notice it's a lot faster (smoother) on dual-processor machines.

for sure !, I can note it with Safari. Happens that Safari is not my main browser so I could not 'see' it.

KidRed · Mar 22, 2004, 10:39 AM

It aslo depends on your mouse software. My logitech software overlapps the smooth scrolling. So if you have software for ytour mouse installed, your mouse may not exhibit the smooth scrolling. I had used my laptop with a mouse and no software and smooth scrolling was nice and smooth. However, on my QS it was smooth until I installed the Logitech software and then it went default (with the scroll wheel).