Re: SFL More

On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 12:30 PM, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This re-raises a question for which I have never seen a reasonable
answer. The whole computer world uses and understands scroll bars. DOS,
Windows, OS/2, HTML, JAVA, javascript, iOS, androids, Everything else.
Except 5250 shops. We've had scroll bars available to us for... gosh... 25
years? Yet we pooh-pooh them and refuse to use them. We will do everything
imaginable to create the functionality, but we aggressively refuse to even
consider a very simply implemented scroll bar.

Why do we avoid scroll bars? Scroll bars allow scrolling, they allow
inching. They show our place is the subfile, and they provide an
indication as to the size of the subfile. All by just by adding 7
characters. There is nothing else to do. Nothing else at all.
Constraints needed are 3 empty columns and using the actual subfile size
for the SFLSIZE keyword. Yet good, experienced RPG programmers raise their
hackles and get red in the face when scroll bars get mentioned.

Booth, in my limited experience and from old memory, the problem with 5250
scroll bars is, when you use them on subfiles that are built a page at a
time, the scroll bar doesn't represent how much data is in the subfile. I
remember users being annoyed that the scroll bar kept getting smaller as
you paged down (because more records were being added to the subfile), and
they felt "fooled", never really knowing how close to the end of the
subfile they were. Also, some subfile programs never exceed one page of
subfile records; a page up or page down will clear the subfile and new
records written to that.

Now, if all of your subfile programs always fill the subfile before
displaying it, then I agree that scroll bars can be useful. But, I would
never willingly write a program that does that.

Also, those 3 columns removed for scroll bars are oftentimes valuable.

Why do we avoid scroll bars? When users see a scrollable screen with out
a scroll bar their first reaction is "This is ancient" and they are right.
We are doing this to ourselves. The training curve is zero. The result is
an attractive window understood by everyone.

Another deterrent is that, in our shop at least, UI consistency rules, as
we have a *lot* of inexperienced users in our call centers. The only way
introducing the "GUI" gadgets to our screens would fly here is if every
screen in production has them on the day they are deployed. Hell would
freeze first.

My 2¢: Scroll bars, push buttons, and check boxes are lipstick on a pig.
No one using a 5250 screen with them is going to say "Ooooh, modern GUI!"
If one is concerned about the perception that a 5250 screen generates, they
should be moving towards the browser interface and forget about 5250 eye
candy.

- Dan