Little scroller eats borders... film at 11

[LivingInThePast]

Not too long ago (I'm slow) I started holding down the mouse wheel in order to scroll - it causes this cute little circle-with-arrows thingy to appear on the screen and you can just scroll by moving the mouse. Cute.

But I noticed something weird - and only on SDMB. When I'm looking at a thread and I use that scroll circle, as the blue borders scroll up and "under" the circle, the circle "takes a bite" out of the border: The border now has a curved chunk taken from its underside. If I scroll back the other way, as the border passes under the circle, the piece is restored and the border looks good as new.

I wish I could post an image, but I don't have a website to put it on.

Using Win2K and IE6, if it matters.

Any idea what's going on?

(I know, there's a war going on and all that, but that circle's driving me nuts!)

[silenus]

Funny...I run the same system config and it doesn't do that for me. Maybe it's you.

[Mbossa]

It happens to me, too (you may be a freak, LivingInThePast, but you're not the only freak ). Well, only on computers at my university - my home computer's mouse doesn't have a scrollwheel.

I've also noticed that when I scroll (with either the scrollwheel or the scroll bar), borders that scroll onto the screen appear fatter when I scroll slowly and thinner when I scroll quickly. If I scroll fast enough, the borders disappear completely.

[Colophon]

Weird. I haven't got a scroll wheel on this (work) computer, but just by scrolling up and down with the scrollbar I can get the blue rules to get thinner, fatter, or disappear altogether! I just tried on another, longer, thread, and it doesn't work... Hmm...

[Kymodoce]

In the spirit of providing (hopefully) useful information, my Win2K and Mozilla Firefox doesn't do this. Everything scrolls perfectly and the blue borders stay well behaved.

[Go You Big Red Fire Engine]

Happens to me as well. Also happens if I have a window open above it or something like that. I'm running OSX and IE.

[Shrinking Violet]

I see it, too.

(Win98SE, IE6)

[Really Not All That Bright]

IE 6.0.2 and Win XP, and I've been seeing that for years. In fact, I can change the color of the post dividers by clicking on them (and no, they aren't just being highlighted).

[TellMeI'mNotCrazy]

Mine only happens in the reverse situation. If the border is still white (and I've gotten a little OCD about making them blue, for some reason) and I do the scroll wheel bit, it will make a little curved blue spot. But it doesn't happen the other way around.

[Genghis Bob]

Cool. I didn't know you could do that with the wheel. Thanks, LivingInThePast.

And, yeah, mine takes the bite out of the borders, too. Now I know what I'll be doing the rest of the afternoon!

[TellMeI'mNotCrazy]

Argh, a new compulsion for me... Geez thanks.

What I just figured out though is that scrolling down will take bites out of blue borders, scrolling up will take bites out of the white ones.

[rowrrbazzle]

This has been discussed in the thread in ATMB, and here's my post in that thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...71#post4749871

A little more experimenting showed I could get both a blue circle bottom on a white background and a white circle top on a blue background. I had to have bottom of the scroll icon start on the border to get the blue circle.

This thread will probably be moved to ATMB soon.

[Dragwyr]

I've never run into this particular problem but it's been my experience that things like this are a screen resolution problem. Have you tried changing your screen resolution and then seeing if it still happens? Perhaps the refresh rate of the monitor could cause a change as well.

[LivingInThePast]

Originally Posted by Mbossa

I've also noticed that when I scroll (with either the scrollwheel or the scroll bar), borders that scroll onto the screen appear fatter when I scroll slowly and thinner when I scroll quickly. If I scroll fast enough, the borders disappear completely.

Must have something to do with special relativity, then. Maybe you've discovered FTL scrolling!

[scabpicker]

To all the people affected by this border eating, including the mac user: What video card are you using?

Just a wild guess from experience. It has been ages since I supported IE, though, and well, if it does not happen in Mozilla, then IE's rendering is pretty much the culprit. But, in the olden days, you used to see funky problems in browsers fixed by switching video cards, or updating the drivers.