A hotkey that locks the scroll bar in place

[-Kirby-]

So I've been referring to the circled area in this screenshot as the "event scroll" because I don't know if it has an official name and that's basically what it is: a scroll of events (such as firing, entries and exits, etc)



Anyway. Something SW said reminded me about an idea I've had in the back of my mind for a while:

I remember in BF when it would be so busy you'd have to scroll up to read the stuff because it was updating too fast.

This is true.

And scrolling back up has always been a pain when there are things happening on your screen. Why? Because every time an event occurs, the scroll bar automatically goes to the bottom to show it.

I have experienced many moments in tournaments in which I have pressed the top ten button just as a key deactivation has occurred, and of course the list bumps it off the visible portion of my scroll. With 7-8 tanks shooting on your screen you have enough time between your shots to grab the scroll bar with your mouse and move it back up to see who died, yes... but every time someone shoots the scroll automatically goes back to the bottom. Each event basically pulls the scroll bar out of your hand. I find that in order to really scroll upwards you have to constantly fight against it by keeping your mouse in motion, which is kind of cumbersome to do in the heat of play.

My proposed solution to this is simple: a hotkey for the player to toggle that simply stops the scroll bar from automatically going back to the bottom whenever an event occurs. When activated, the scroll bar just hangs wherever you leave it. That way you can scroll up with ease when lots of things are happening around you. When you want it to show the most recent events again you simply press they key again and it will default back to the bottom as usual.

Of course with lots of things going on around you the event scroll is still going to be moving upwards while you scroll up, but it would still be easier to catch up with something you've missed this way.


Here, I made a quick video just to illustrate in case things were unclear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djdv8VdTXlI (0:40)
I guess I forgot to shut off my music
But anyway you can see that new events pull the scroll bar right out from under your mouse. This happened in BF as well and it's just something I've always thought should be improved.

[SW]

Sounds like a pretty useless waste of a hotkey lol...

Will probably be changed not to automatically scroll if you're not at the bottom in new client.

[-Kirby-]

True, I guess you don't need a hotkey at all if it is just changed to not automatically scroll to the bottom.

That or perhaps there could be a delay in which something like 4 seconds after letting go of the scroll bar it automatically goes back down (because I do like that when I'm done reading I can just let go of it :) )

Thanks for the reply