Even with a mouse wheel, for anything more than a screen or two of information, I prefer to grab the scroll bar and manually move it to where I want. I hate it when site or apps use a skinny scroll bar, because it makes it a more difficult click target. Honestly, I've never used a site that used custom scrollbars that I was happy to see, for this reason, and the others that are in this thread.
I guess it all comes down to the designer changing what should be an operating system or browser style choice. I'm going to use the application for a few minutes, but I use the OS for hours. Everything within the scope of the application is up for grabs, but when you change how I expect the container for the application to look and feel, then it gets annoying. This includes scroll bars and mouse cursors in web application, custom title bars and window controls in desktop applications, and various other tweaks.
I once made a flash picture viewer, where the picture scrolls by the location of the mouse pointer. I would do the same here, mouse pointer at top === scrollTop an vice versa to bottom. Still I would have to test it before I could agree that it is a usable pattern for buttons.
What about users who don't have a mouse wheel?
Even with a mouse wheel, for anything more than a screen or two of information, I prefer to grab the scroll bar and manually move it to where I want. I hate it when site or apps use a skinny scroll bar, because it makes it a more difficult click target. Honestly, I've never used a site that used custom scrollbars that I was happy to see, for this reason, and the others that are in this thread.
I guess it all comes down to the designer changing what should be an operating system or browser style choice. I'm going to use the application for a few minutes, but I use the OS for hours. Everything within the scope of the application is up for grabs, but when you change how I expect the container for the application to look and feel, then it gets annoying. This includes scroll bars and mouse cursors in web application, custom title bars and window controls in desktop applications, and various other tweaks.
I once made a flash picture viewer, where the picture scrolls by the location of the mouse pointer. I would do the same here, mouse pointer at top === scrollTop an vice versa to bottom. Still I would have to test it before I could agree that it is a usable pattern for buttons.
In this particular example, those are a list of links, so keyboard would work fine.
And as long as there's a little non-interactive space, click n drag with a non-wheeled mouse.