∞ Natural scrolling and Quick Look URLs in Lion

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OS X Lion has a new feature called natural scrolling that is trying my patience, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I have a few tips that may help you get used to it too.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]Although it’s called “natural,” the new scrolling direction seems the most unnatural thing to me. In older versions of OS X, when you slide your fingers down on the trackpad, a Web page would move down. When you slide your fingers up, the Web page moves up.

Simple, right.

With natural scrolling, when you slide your fingers up, the content goes down. Conversely, when you move your fingers down, the content goes up. After years of doing it the other way, this is hard to get used to.

Here is what people have been telling me on Twitter.

  • Think of your Trackpad has an iPad screen and how you would move the content on that.
  • The old way of scrolling moves the scrollbar, while the new way moves the content.
  • If you put your fingers on the screen of your computer, which way would you move your fingers to move the Web page?

So, I’m giving natural scrolling a try again. I’m using those tips to remember how it’s supposed to work and I’ll give it a week. Everyone has said that I’ll get used to it.

Here’s another tip that I saw from Simon Harper on Twitter today. If you drag a URL from Safari and place it on your desktop and then do a Quick Look (select the file and press the spacebar) of it, OS X will render the Web page for you. Cool.


  • Vamsmack

    I adjusted to this quite quickly after a day’s use I am already fairly comfortable with it. Sure I sometimes skip a beat and go the wrong way but I am adjusting remarkably quickly to what felt like a very unnatural gesture.

  • http://www.macgasm.net Joshua Schnell

    At first I hated it. Then I had a freakout and thought that the “natural” scrolling could be the firsts technology  on the slippery slope of old-man tech newbery.  Refusing to be left behind, I immediately turned it back on.  All kidding aside, it took me about a solid week to get it down.  I don’t even notice it any more.

  • Anonymous

    I’m trying it for a bit as well, but I have to switch between Windows and Mac so I may not ever adjust correctly and will end up switching it back.

    • http://www.aichon.com Brad

      Same boat for me. I deal with Windows often enough that I don’t think I want to make this jump. That said, I’d love to see someone put out a driver or something that unlinks the trackpad and mouse settings, since you currently have to go all-in or nothing. I may want natural scrolling for my trackpad, but I definitely don’t for my mouse if I’m having to use Windows regularly.

    • http://twitter.com/nejcd Nejc Žorga Dulmin

      At work I use windows and you can fix the scrolling with an autohotkey:

      http://www.howtogeek.com/57542/how-to-get-the-worst-os-x-lion-feature-in-windows-reverse-scrolling/

  • http://twitter.com/rennarda Andy Rennard

    Thinking about it, there was never any real logic to the old scrolling direction. We started off dragging scroll thumbs to move content, and then when wheel mice started appearing the wheel direction was set to move the scroll thumb in the same direction, and therefore the content in the opposite direction. But there’s no reason for this – and it’s indirect if you think about it – you’re scrolling to move something that then moves the thing you actually want to scroll. Some programmer at Microsoft probably just arbitrarily decided this is how is should work and every body else followed suit.

    ‘Natural’ is the right name for it, and I’m sure we’ll all think so once we’ve adjusted !

    • http://twitter.com/pauloclayton Paulo Clayton

      Very true, but many (including myself) have become ingrained with associating the “scrolling down the page” action with the actual direction of down.  We want to look further *down* a page, so scrolling down is what we ended up with.  The “natural” scrolling makes perfect sense for touchscreen devices as you get the impression you’re physically manipulating the displayed page.  If I could use Lion on a touchscreen device I’d be all about the natural scrolling, but with it as is, I shut it off right away on my MBP.  Here’s hoping a new Mac with a true touchscreen is somewhere in the future! (But I’m not gonna hold my breath.)

    • Anonymous

      The scroll thumbs represented the view, not the content itself. So moving the scroll thumbs down meant moving the view to the content down. It did make sense from that perspective.

      The easiest way to overcome this to “pretend” your finger is on the content, not the scroll bar, then it becomes completely natural to scroll this way.

  • John Baxter

    It took me a long time (starting before Macintosh) to stop thinking that the old way to scroll was backwards. That doesn’t mean that I’m not seeing the little content dance that says “idiot, you’re going the wrong way again.” But the “natural” way feels right even as I retrain.

    (I did buy a Magic Trackpad to prepare for Lion–I don’t know how I would feel as a Windows-style mouse user.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=531281973 Jonny Rocket

    Hey Jim I quite like it now. I have a Lion and a Snow Leopard, and now I work both ways!! Yeah, give it a try, I hope you get used to it soon :-)