Re: today's how-best-to question...

Hi Booth,

One point: The size of the piece inside the scroll bar (Is that called a thumb, perhaps?) is a function of the SFLSIZ & SFLPAG keywords. If you populate those keyword values accurately then you will get a reasonable approximation of the percentage of the subfile being shown, excepting when the subfile is very small.

Just want to point out that there are times when you should use this approach, and times when you shouldn't.

Your argument about the scroll bar and the "thumb" are certainly valid points. In a modern interface, you might liken this to a long web page. Same thing, you have the scroll bar on the side that you can use to scroll up and down.

But there are also times (even in a modern interface) where this isn't practical. Consider a Google search. Search for the word "computer", it returns 726 million entries. Would you want all of these entries to load on the page? Would you want to wait for them to load? (I hope these are rhetorical questions!)

Instead, you page through the results, 10 entries at a time, (or 20 or 50 or whatever). That is, it's a single page load subfile.

Both techniques make sense in the right context. Use the right tool for the job.