scroll bar/slide bar disappears after a few seconds very anoying

Tony,will your instructions work on Surface RT?

thanks for your remarks I appreciated that you took the time to reply & give me your perspective & a good one at that  We do agree on Microsoft in that their managers seems to be a little bit touchy

I agree that one shouldn't have to fix the 'bugs' created by the extremely bad design patterns that Microsoft seem to be insisting are the 'future of design', but that is a really good point by Ben... it is ACTUALLY possible to solve this by using your own style-sheet (I'm kicking myself for not having thought of it as it's so simple).

I thought I'd give detailed instructions...it doesn't require a 'technical' mind (though I'm still not sure what exactly that is - not having a fear of learning new things possibly). I've tried to be as detailed as possible in my instructions - don't let what looks like a LOT of text and words put you off. It really is only a 30-45 second job!

PART 1

1/ Open 'Notepad'. Type or copy the @-ms-viewport{ width:auto !important} line from above (or here) and paste it into the notepad window.

2/ Now click 'File|Save as'

3/ Change the 'Save as type' (under the box where you'd type the filename) to 'All Files'

4/ In the 'File Name' box type a name like 'mystyle.css' (without the quotes). The important part is the .css at the end which tells it that we are saving a 'style' file. What the bit before that is called is up to you, but 'mystyle' is as good as anything else.

5/ Look where you are about to save it (is it going to be saved in My Documents (or Documents) or in Music or in Videos etc etc. Just remember where it is, so you can go back and find it in a minute.

6/ Save it.

7/ Exit Notepad.

PART 2

1/ Open Internet Explorer (if it isn't already open)

1. Click the Tools button (or the cog if you can't see the Tools button), and then click Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab, and then click Accessibility.
3. In the Accessibility dialog box, select the Format documents using my style sheet check box.
4. Click Browse and navigate to the style sheet you just created.
5. Click OK twice to finish.

You're done!! From now on the 'style sheet' you just created will be applied to every site you visit, in theory this should force every site to show the scrollbars properly.

If this doesn't work (by the way you WILL probably have to close and reopen IE for it to load the style sheet you created), then reopen the style file you created by finding it using say Windows Explorer (called File Explorer in more ermm...modern... Windows Operating Systems) and right-clicking ON it and using the 'Open with' option... choose Notepad from the list.

Then instead of the text you copied to it earlier try:

body  { -ms-overflow-style: scrollbar }

and then Save it. (In theory you don't need to go through all the mullarkey of setting the file type to All files etc this time as it should just save it in the same way as it found it.

Close and re-open IE. In theory it should now work.

Whew! Seemed like a lot of work, but honestly it was a LOT harder for me to write this all out than it was for you to actually do what I've suggested don't you think :-)

Good luck (whether you decide to use this tip or not).

It may bug everyone but it's not a bug, Joe49k...not in the computer sense of the word. It's not about saving space either..how much space does a scrollbar take up!? And don't forget the other massive annoyance of the side bar and enormous utterly pointless clock popping out every time you move your cursor near the right hand side or swipe left on a laptop mousepad, which to me is every bit as frustrating and time wasting.

It's about Microsofts decision to make all their new software easier to use on mobile touch screen devices (Surface?) and not caring one jot about users of laptops and desktops who paid their money for something they hate, because they know, for most people, there's no alternative. They've got us by the you know whats!

The only way to make them take notice is to boycott their products...beginning with Windows 10, IE,  Surface and Windows phones.

They really are an arrogant monopoly company, who hold their customers in contempt!

It is hard-coded in one sense, but web-site developers do have an option to stop the scrollbars disappearing...just that Microsoft haven't exactly gone out of their way to let developers know that.

None of my own web-sites that I 've created allow the scrollbar to disappear as I've included CSS to stop it. Every developer can do this. I don't have a problem with scrollbars disappearing if they're not in use, but if I'm hovering over them, then they are in use as far as I'm concerned!

Can't recall the exact CSS to stop them disappearing off top of my head, but if you know any web-developers you could ask them to do a search online for the appropriate code (only couple lines of css) and include it in any of their websites going forward.