iPhoto ’08 vs. Both-at-Both-Ends Scroll Bars

The Appearance panel in System Preference has two options for the arrow buttons at the end of scroll bars: putting up at the top and down at the bottom, or putting both of them at the bottom. But at least since 10.1, Mac OS X has supported a third option via a defaults setting: putting both arrows at both the top and bottom.

iPhoto ’08 uses iTunes 7-style blue scroll bars. Alas, its implementation craps out if you’re using the “both at both ends” option. It works, but it draws visual turds. iTunes 7 doesn’t actually support this option, either — it looks OK but only draws the arrows at the bottom. (The rest of the iLife ’08 apps use standard Aqua scroll bars.)

★ Thursday, 9 August 2007