Scrollbars have been a part of Windows since the beginning. Scrollbars are particularly useful because they allow a window to hold more content than will fit within the window. Scrollbars are everywhere in Windows. The very webpage you are reading has a scrollbar on the right of the window.
Scrollbars look different depending upon which version of Windows you are running. Before Windows XP, scrollbars were mostly silver with blocky shaded sides. Windows XP scrollbars are blue by default (see the image below). And Windows Vista/Windows 7 scrollbars are silver but shine blue when clicked.
Because they are everywhere, many people don’t realize how useful scrollbars can be once you understand how to use all of their features.
There are up to five parts of a scrollbar that you can use to move content around within the window:
The Up Arrow and Down Arrow at the very top and bottom of the scrollbar. When clicked, they will cause the content of the window to go up or down by a small amount, usually about ¼ of a page. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, the Up and Down Arrows appear as black triangles until you actually click on them.
The Thumb is the rectangle in the middle. It will vary in size depending upon how much content the window is displaying. If there are only a few lines more than will fit, the thumb will be very long, and if there is a lot to scroll, the thumb will be small. The thumb is used by clicking the mouse button, holding it down and dragging the thumb up or down (or right or left if it’s a horizontal scrollbar).
The Gutter (also know as the Channel) is the background part of the scroll bar. The thumb divides the gutter into two parts. If you click the gutter area, the content will scroll up by a large amount, typically a by full page of content.
In practice, the arrows are similar to pressing the arrow keys in a web browser (see Tip 1: Browser Navigation Basics) and clicking the gutter is similar to using the Page Up and Page Down keys. Dragging the thumb is a powerful way to find the precise part of a document you may be looking for.
Remember that scrollbars come in two flavors: vertical and horizontal. They work the same regardless of orientation.
Next time we’ll talk a little more about the keyboard and some of those keys you’ve always wondered about. See you then…
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