How can I permanently show scrollbars?

Kerndog73

I want a set of scroll bars to be a permanent part of the UI. I want them to always be visible. The following snippet is not enough.

setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOn);
setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOn);

I want the scroll bars to be visible even when they aren't necessary. How can I achieve this?

jsulm

@Kerndog73 Are you sure this scrollArea is the correct one? It looks like it is allocated on the stack. Where do you execute this code and can you show it?

Kerndog73

@jsulm My actual code is slightly different. I'm deriving from QScrollArea. I'm also using custom QScrollBars. This is more similar to what I'm doing:

class ScrollBar final : public QScrollBar {
public:
  ScrollBar(Qt::Orientation orient, QWidget *parent)
    : QScrollBar{orient, parent} {}
};

class ScrollArea final : public QScrollArea {
public:
  explicit ScrollArea(QWidget *parent)
    : QScrollArea{parent} {
    setVerticalScrollBar(new ScrollBar{Qt::Vertical, this});
    setHorizontalScrollBar(new ScrollBar{Qt::Horizontal, this});
    setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOn);
    setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOn);
  }
};

Is Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOn supposed to make the scrollbar always visible or am I experiencing expected behaviour?

jsulm

@Kerndog73 From documentation (https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qt.html#ScrollBarPolicy-enum):
"QAbstractScrollArea always shows a scroll bar. This property is ignored on systems with transient scroll bars (e.g., on Mac from version 10.7)."

On which platform are you?

Kerndog73

@jsulm I'm on a mac. Is there any way around this? Will I have to make my own scroll area from scratch if I want this behaviour? Maybe the scroll area could emulate scroll bars by setting content margins, responding to mouse events and painting? There must be a better way!

BTW, how do I earn reputation on this site? Having to wait 10 minutes to reply is kind of annoying.

jsulm

@Kerndog73 Maybe you could use https://doc.qt.io/Qt-5/qscrollbar.html instead of the scroll area, but this means more work. Also, do you really want to work against platform UI design guidelines?

SGaist

Hi,

I agree with @jsulm. What is your goal behind showing these scrollbars permanently on macOS ? It's been 7 versions since they are transient and everybody will expect that. Showing them permanently will make your application feel broken to your users.

Kerndog73

@SGaist @jsulm I've been using macOS since Mavericks. I've given this quite a bit of thought and I think you're right. I should accept the defaults in this case.