Ask Lemmy: Traditional vs natural mouse scrolling; which do you use?

thayer@lemmy.ca to Linux@lemmy.ml – 181 points –

Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this "natural" scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.

I've been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered...how many of you folks prefer this method?

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I never remember which one is natural and which one is reverse. When I use a mouse or a trackpad, I am moving the scroll bar. When I am using a touch screen, I am moving the content.

That makes sense and is probably the best no-nonsense rationale I've seen yet.

my idea is that when I scroll on the mouse, the bottom part of the scroll wheel touches the content

This makes sense to me too. The way I have always viewed it is that if you were to lay the mouse wheel on the screen itself, it would behave the way as if it were interacting physically.

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