KPerry
Ie. if I want to look at what's under what I'm currently looking at, I move the scrollbar down, I press the down cursor or I drag the mouse wheel down. 

 
Well, but how about when, for examople, a set of notes/clips you want to edit is only half visible in the right corner of the pane? I'd say it's easier and more efficient to just grab the view and drag it to the lower left corner a bit than moving the horizontal scroll bar to left AND drag the mouse wheel down. 

I find dragging the background so counter-intuitive and at odds with how everything else works that I wouldn't do that - like I said, a way of dragging the view would be consistent and do what we both (in our own way) want.  just not the background.  Ever.

The navigation pane works pretty nicely for that, both vertically and horizontally. Have you tried using that?

The navigation pane is a waste of space and would pretty much be rendered obsolete by a hand tool. Well maybe not for those  huge 300+tracks projects, but for most projects anyway.
 
I'm not suggesting they get rid of the scroll bars, mouse wheel scrolling, or anything in favor of replacing it with a hand. You'd still be able to turtle your way around just fine.
 
It's just a few lines of code that tie both scroll bars to mouse movement with a cursor icon. We're talking first year programming school level coding.
 
But I mean, there could be more to it, too, like inertia after you release the grab button, depending on mouse acceleration you could throw the screen from one end of the project to the other, it could be interesting.

A pan tool would be a useful alternative to scroll bars. It would suit some particular setups more than others. I would probably use it more on my laptop rather than my main DAW.
 

hmm... perhaps I'm missing something.
 
If I want to drag horizontally I can drag (AND zoom) by just grabbing the timeline. I could of course also use the scroll bar at the bottom of the TV but it is fixed to project length and you need to click the magnify buttons for zooming so I ignore it. One of the most useful features is the Drag Scroll/Zoom timeline introduced in X2 but I think many people don't use it for some reason.
 
I digress...
 
If I want to scroll vertically then I just use the scroll bar to the right of the Track view. If anything what I would like is maybe a feature simialar to the Timeline Zoom where if I drag the scrollbar left/right it auto zooms the track height incrementally (and being able to disable that feature if desired). Maybe a "Track Snap" option would be cool too so when enabled as you scroll vertically the Track View snaps to the top of tracks (instead of halfway... again something that cna be disabled). The Auto Track Zoom thingie kind of does this but I find it a little awkward in general so this would be a better option for how I work.
 
Between those two things the only thing not covered would be diagonal scrolling that a "Hand Tool" could provide but the idea of having to switch tools or hold a modifier key kind of negates any real benefit of such a tool.
 
The more options the better really but it just doesn't seem worth the effort.
 
meh...
 
Edit: I just thought of a possible good solution... check it out.
 
Maybe instead of screwing around with hand tools or the vertical scrollbars maybe add modifiers to the existing Timeline zoom. Like as you drag Up/Down instead of Zooming Horz. you...
 
Hold Ctrl and it Scrolls Vert.
 
Hold Shift and it Zooms Vert.
 
Hold Ctrl + Shift and it Zoom/Scrolls Vert.
 
And I don't see any reason why you still wouldn't be able to drag left/right on the timeline while doing so (but my brain is all distracted and wacky so I may be overlooking something... just brainstorming).
 
So essentially in that scheme you can get ALL Zooming/Scrolling in ALL directions (even diagonally) by just clicking/messing around on the timeline.
 
Again... meh... just brainstorming.

And how do you handle the various options if you click on a clip and drag?  Do I want to drag the viewport or the clip?  It's a minefield.  Keep it simple, keep it reliable, keep it as it is.

jesus H christ.
 
here's what would happen once the cursor is a hand, whether you're above a clip, an automation line, or the vast empty space upon which our projects lie
 
nothing
 
nothing at all except the screen would scroll around, it's a CURSOR
 
you think they can come up with the smart tool and have all this elaborate cursor management system, they somehow this right here would present a technical hurdle?
 
you guys are just winding me up at this point
 
and how did zooming even find its way into this thread?
 
if you don't believe me, make the test. download the FL demo, use the hand tool. then come back to sonar and try to scroll around. you'll +1 the thread faster than a walnut can roll down the hen-house roof.