Widen AppletPanel scrollbar and add hover-reveal for accessibility#2257
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Restores scrollbar width to 12px (matching the ~12-16px native OS default users were accustomed to before ten9876#2088 introduced the 6px dark-theme bar). Adds hover-reveal so the bar is hidden at rest and appears on mouse-over, with a :pressed state to keep the handle visible during active dragging.
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Looks good — clean, focused QSS change that stays within scope. A few observations:
Functional concern: handle visibility on first interaction
The handle starts fully transparent and only becomes visible on :hover or :pressed. This means on touch-only devices (or pen/stylus without hover) the user has no way to discover the scrollbar exists — they can scroll via the wheel/trackpad but never see the handle. Not a blocker for this PR since the stated goal is desktop mouse accessibility, but worth noting if AetherSDR ever targets touch.
Minor QSS note
The hover-reveal triggers on QScrollBar::handle:vertical:hover — on Qt 5 this requires the mouse to land directly on the (transparent) handle, which could be tricky. On Qt 6 it works as expected because the scrollbar groove forwards hover to the handle. Since AetherSDR is Qt 6, this should be fine.
No issues found with:
- Scope: single file, stylesheet-only, no logic changes
- Conventions: no settings involved, no resource ownership changes
- Platform risk: standard QSS properties, nothing platform-specific
Nice PR description and good callout about being open to colour/width tweaks. Thanks @Chaosuk97!
Maintainer feedback: the hover-reveal felt too abrupt and the transparent track left a visible gap on the right edge of the panel when the slider faded out. Changes from the original PR: - Track always visible at #0a0a14 (matches the rest of the app and fills the gap consistently — no transparent strip). - Handle dim (#2a3a4a) at rest, bright (#4a6880) on hover or drag. - 500ms delay before dimming back so quick scroll gestures don't flicker; re-entering during the hold cancels the timer. - Implemented via dynamic property `active` plus an event filter on the QScrollBar (QSS doesn't support animated transitions). `min-height: 20px` and the bright color are unchanged. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <[email protected]>
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Claude here — thanks Ian, great catch on the accessibility complaint and clean QSS work in the original change. The brighter handle colour and Follow-up we pushed (94b6745)After local testing, Jeremy felt the hover-reveal was too abrupt and that the transparent track left a visible gap on the right edge of the panel when the slider faded out. We pushed a small revision:
Implemented via a dynamic Your Thanks again for the careful work — and for flagging the design call upfront per CLAUDE.md, that made the review easy. 73, Jeremy KK7GWY & Claude (AI dev partner) |
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Summary
6px→12px, in line with the native OS default (~12–16px) that users were accustomed to before Add visible scrollbar styling to AppletPanel scroll area (#2071) #2088:pressedstate so the handle stays visible while actively dragging (previously disappeared mid-scroll)#304050→#4a6880) for better contrast against the dark trackmin-height: 20pxto the handle so it never shrinks to an unclickable sliver with many applets loadedBackground
PR #2088 introduced explicit dark-theme scrollbar styling to fix macOS hiding the bar entirely. The chosen
6pxwidth is significantly thinner than the ~12–16px native default users were accustomed to. Before #2088 there was no stylesheet applied, so the OS rendered its own full-width bar.User feedback:
The Qt stylesheet change uses standard QSS properties and should apply uniformly across macOS, Linux, and Windows, though only tested on macOS.
Files modified
src/gui/AppletPanel.cppDesign note for maintainer
Width (12px), handle colour (#4a6880), and hover-reveal behaviour are open to adjustment — flagging per CLAUDE.md since this is a visual design change.
Test plan
:pressedstate)