scrollbars: required standards or tradition?

[dorayme]

1) You need to carry your own road everywhere
2) When you get to a corner, the wheels need to follow a line through the
curve *perfectly* or a rough ride could result . Think about it... if the
road is curved, the 'bumps' need to follow a radial pattern, which means the
geometry of each bump of the road would need to change according to its
distance from the focus of the curve... bumpy-bumpy (as my 2yo would say).

I guess that it goes to show (yet again) that difference for differences
sake isn't necessarily such a great idea!

The roads will be built once wheels start being designed this way. And
roads (taking the normally horizontal plane of them, think mobius strip
type bends) will raise and curve though bends, the rider needing only to
stay perp to the road at all times.

You don't understand, like Richard, the powerful revolutionary nature of
difference for its own sake.

 

[John Hosking]

Depends on the shape of the road.

http://pages.usiouxfalls.edu/maa/newsletters/Macalester.squarewheels.SW.editedcropped.S04.jpg

On a road like that, a speed bump is a place where it's flat and smooth!

 

[asdf]

The roads will be built once wheels start being designed this way. And
roads (taking the normally horizontal plane of them, think mobius strip
type bends) will raise and curve though bends, the rider needing only to
stay perp to the road at all times.

Great. Until you have to stop. *splat*

You don't understand, like Richard, the powerful revolutionary nature of
difference for its own sake.

Oh I understand the nature of the *accidental discovery* through
experimentation. This doesn't apply to scrollbars, however.

 

[Neredbojias]

That bicycle in the picture was said to have a perfectly smooth ride
on its track. You could even ride it no-hands.

With concave sides it would have wobbled up and down in some fashion
calculating the exact math of which I leave as an exercise to the
reader.

Perfectly smooth? Uh, no. Relatively smooth, perhaps; the distance
from the axle to the center of the earth might even have been the same
when the wheel was exactly in a trough (-with a corner) or exactly on a
crest (-at the middle of a side) but in order to be "perfectly smooth"
the aforementioned distance would have to be either constant or
maintain a constant delta and this could only happen if the wheel
possessed a shape which was quite reciprocal to that of the road,
making it rather like a blurry gear with concave sides and effecting a
constant level (or variance) from the gravitational center.

 

[John Hosking]

I nearly snorted coffee up my nose.

You goof! You're supposed to snort it *out* your nose.

Please, I'd love to hear, which of Thomas Edison's inventions do you
think is most suitable to be compared with the radical idea of putting
the scrollbar in a different position?

Probably that one where the elephant falls over dead...