Ah, the scroll bar. So useful, so misunderstood.
I’ve been standing behind someone and said “scroll down”. The variety of reactions and actions is both entertaining and frustrating.
Anatomy of a scroll bar
Just understanding the anatomy of a scroll bar will clear up a ton of stuff.
- Click the top or bottom arrow to scroll up or down by one unit. The unit varies with the program and what you are looking at. The program tries to make an intelligent decision about what amount of scroll is most useful at the moment.
- Click the space between the arrows and the “thumbwheel” (or so I’ve seen it called – don’t ask me!) to scroll up or down by one windowful.
- Drag the “thumbwheel” to scroll to a specific place in the window. Depending on the program, you may or may not be able to see the spot you want to scroll to.
Arrow keys and scrolling
Many times, it’s more useful to scroll using the keyboard, rather than the mouse. (With laptops, just getting the mouse cursor over the scroll bar can sometimes be a challenge, depending on what kind of controller you have to move the mouse cursor.)
- Up and Down Arrow keys – the behavior varies widely with the program. They often scroll up or down a line. If you can select text, the window usually doesn’t scroll until the text cursor reachs the bottom or top of the window.
- Page Up and Page Down keys – Usually moves up or down by windowful, same as the scroll bar.
- Control+Up/Down Arrow – usually moves up or down by paragraph.
- Control+Home or End – usually moves to top or bottom of document.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Wicked useful, not that well-known. Some people figure it out, but not everyone. Now you know.
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