For the two decades of Windows, the scroll bar control had just a few basic operations. There are five mouse targets: The arrows at the ends scroll by a line, the regions between the thumb and the arrows scroll by a page, and the thumb lets you drag to a specific position. Windows 7 added a right-click menu to the scroll bar with four options matching existing mouse operations, two matching keyboard operations, and a new operation called “Scroll Here”.

You can right-click directly on the spot you want to scroll to, then pick “Scroll Here”. This is much more convenient for long distances, as you don’t have to grab the thumb and drag it. An even-more-hidden shortcut was added at the same time: Shift+click jumps the thumb directly to the spot where you clicked. I didn’t know about this shortcut until recently.

Sadly, almost nobody uses Win32 scroll bars any more. Electron and other Web apps use the Chromium scroll bar, which doesn’t implement the context menu but does implement Shift+click. WPF appears to implement both, while Win UI has neither. The Qt framework has multiple customization points, so it’s up to each app’s developer.

Great, so by the time I learn about a shortcut for scroll bars (Shift+click), the ecosystem has fragmented so much that I can’t even rely on it working.