Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this “natural” scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.

I’ve been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered…how many of you folks prefer this method?

  • jsdz@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s a good thing Apple doesn’t make cars. They’d put the gas pedal on the left just to be different, and claim it’s more “natural” that way.

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Traditional for both scroll wheels and trackpads (trackpads are emulating a mouse, you heathers!) And inverted Y for gaming.

  • Rottcodd@kbin.social
    1·
    9 months ago

    The thing you’re apparently calling “traditional” seems natural to me.

    I’ve never really stopped and thought about it before, but as far as I can figure, my brain expects the part of the system that does or would actually touch the surface to drag the screen in a particular direction through the simple workings of physics.

    On a touchscreen, it’s simple - it’s my finger actually touching the screen and it drags the screen around exactly as I’d expect.

    With a mouse, my finger isn’t the important part because it’s not touching the surface (or more precisely, the mousepad that substitutes for the surface). Rather, my finger is contolling the mouse, and the underside of the mouse is touching the surface. And as far as that goes, the “traditional” way it works is correct - when I move my finger downward on the mouse wheel, the bottom side of the wheel - the part that would actually be touching the surface if it was a purely mechanical system - is moving upward, so would drag the screen upward.

    So to me, that’s what’s natural.

    • aksdb@feddit.de
      1·
      9 months ago

      I guess it depends on what the base line is. When reading a large news paper for example, I presume most people hold it steady in their hand and move their head to progress. Which would be the “traditional scrolling”. If you assume a large scroll of paper (ancient egyptian style) I guess moving the scroll and keeping the head (mostly) steady works fine or even better. That would be the “natural scrolling”.

      But yes, in modern times I can’t think of an equivalent of the scrolls to explain why we would consider that “natural”, if we don’t do it outside of the computer.