Scrollbars

Here's more than you ever wanted to know about scrollbars. When will you have a scrollbar? What's a thumb and how do you move one? There are some handy hints for moving through your messages.

When They Appear

Whenever an area gets too short (vertically or horizontally) to show everything inside, a scrollbar pops up. This goes for buttonboxes, too -- you can scroll through the buttons! If you want to experiment, try using the grips to make a buttonbox smaller.

Length and Position of the Thumb

The thumb (the movable part of the scrollbar) tells you about the text you're viewing. The thumb's length shows what percentage of the text you're seeing. The length of the thumb is inversely proportional to the length of the text -- the shorter the thumb, the longer the text. The thumb's position shows what part of the text you're seeing. If the thumb is at the top of the scrollbar, you're seeing the top of the message. If the top of the thumb is about three-fourths of the way down the scrollbar, you're about three-fourths of the way through the message. And so on.

Moving the Thumb

To see different parts of the message, move the thumb. Do that by clicking one of the mouse buttons and, sometimes, sliding the mouse:

Button 2

The second button relates the position of the message in the window to where you move the pointer. Button 2 is probably the most flexible and is the one I usually use:

• Clicking it at any place in the scrollbar moves the top of the thumb there. To see the top of the message, point to the top of the scrollbar and click the second mouse button. To see the bottom of the message, click button 2 at the bottom of the scrollbar. And so on...
• You can also point to any place in the thumb, hold down the second button, and then slide the mouse up and down. The message will move with you. If you have a slow network or a jumpy display, though, this can be frustrating.

Button 1

The first button moves the line of text at the right of the pointer to the top of the area. I like to use this for scrolling forward through the text:

• Put the pointer at the bottom of the scrollbar and click the first button to see the next page forward (with about a line of the previous page at the top).
• Put the pointer near the top of the scrollbar and click the first button to move down line by line. Point a little farther from the top and you'll jump several lines at a time.

Button 3

The third button moves the line at the top of the window down to the pointer's location. Think of it as the opposite of the first button. I use it for scrolling backward through text:

• Put the pointer at the bottom of the scrollbar and click the third button to see the previous page (with about a line of overlap).
• Or put the pointer near the top of the scrollbar and click the third button to move up line by line. Point a little farther from the top and you'll jump several lines at a time.