Headspace Design

Scrolling is the new… not scrolling?

Posted On July 25th, 2012 Author Kyle Racki  Filed Under Design   2

So you've often heard clients say: "There's too much on the page, people might not know to scroll. Did I mention, I HATE scrolling on websites?"

Yes, this was the reality of the web a few years ago. But is this direction really relevant now?

I say, no.

First of all, the only time scrolling ever sucked was when you had to physically maneuver your mouse over to the right side of your browser window, click and drag it down. But wheel's on mice have been standard for about 10 years ago, and on Mac laptops, you have to merely use two fingers to scroll instead of clicking and dragging anything.

And of course, touch screens have changed everything. One finger to swipe up or down the page is all it takes.

But mobile devices are the primary reason that having a lot of content on a page is not really a big deal. In fact, I'd argue that it makes for a worse user-experience to limit content to above the (imaginary) fold.

The primary reason is bandwidth. What makes more sense, to have a large list of links, that when one is clicked, the user must wait for a page load, only to find a paragraph or two of copy. Or would it make more sense to have a large amount of content, well laid out that the user can casually scroll through without any unnecessary load?

I'd say the latter.

In fact, what excites me the most about web design right now is that you can treat the page like it's a big poster or brochure, and you can explore fun ways to break up a large page of content into multiple columns of text, and a more sparse layout. This is where web design is heading folks.

What would you rather?

This?

Or this