[aidos]

Because designs on the web are different from those on desktops and big white scrollbars on a dark design look horrific? Also, because you want your design to work nicely irrespective of the browser and scrollbars and dropdowns make that really hard.

It sucks, but there's a reason that people choose to try to replace these elements (unfortunately, with mixed results).

For future reference, you can actually get rid of nasty scrollbars without ruining the normal scroll behaviour by having an outer div(overflow:hidden, width:x) containing the content div(width:x+scrollbar-width).

[E6300]

> Because designs on the web are different from those on desktops and big white scrollbars on a dark design look horrific?

Where do you draw the line, though? The scrollbar is not part of the website, it's part of the window where the website is being rendered, and the window is itself part of a desktop environment. Would you try to override the look and feel of the desktop environment if you could?

[vxNsr]

>Would you try to override the look and feel of the desktop environment if you could?

The answer to this question is almost always yes by short sighted designers who try to control scrolling behavior. In fact optimally they'd like to control your hardware look and feel also.

[aidos]

There's a difference between changing behaviour and changing the design. I'd imagine that most designers that design without scroll bars have no idea what the devs are going to do to change behaviour.

I hate it when the scrolling feels unnatural. At the same time, it's good when the design looks nice. It's possible to achieve both of those things.

[malka]

Because it is also present in chromeless (aka full screen) mode.

[aidos]

There's a difference between the whole window and an element within the page. We have a single page app that still had scroll bars for subsections in the sidebar and quick frankly, it's embarrassing.

[E6300]

Fair enough. I don't think it's such a big deal, though. Probably no one cares how it looks as much as you think they do.

[gkya]

It truly sucks, as you said. Also, the web pages are within my browser's chrome, which occupies about a third of my screen, and behind it there's my wallpaper, and behind my screen I've a nice champagne-colour wall and some books, pens, and other stuff. What will you do if your design looks off in front of them? Change them too? Should the browser allow you to change the wallpaper?

Nasty scrollbars. OK. What if I want to scroll down about a third of a hypothetical long page? I'd either use the wheel/touchpad and make multiple gestures to reach there, or hit space/page down multiple times, or hit end and page up a bit less times, or just point the mouse cursor to about where I want to go on the scrollbar and click on the blinking thing. That nasty scrollbar is mine.

[aidos]

Once again, it's possible to have scrollbars that function as normal but fit with the design of the page.