05 Feb 06

To scroll or not to scroll…

Some people love the scroll-bar, others no-like… c’mon peeps! The scroll-bar really is your friend…

The other day a client commented about our working prototype design; something like “Great! Love it. But we do not like the scrolling you have to do to see all the images…”.

This is a tricky issue; we design our sites so that they work across multiple device types — from mobile phones to boardroom wide-screens. If you have a lot of stuff to show on each web page, something has to give to be able to fit it all on the screen.

There are 3 ways to deal with the issue:

• Use Javascript and/or web-server trickery to deliver images & text sized to suit the device: expensive and a hassle to maintain.
• Break-up the text and/or imagery into smaller chunks so that a scroll-bar is typically unnecessary. This works well for some content, but puts a burden on the user — they’ll have to click somewhere to navigate through the content. Not too much of a biggie, you’d think… until you consider how lazy most people are when they browse the web. If they’re simply browsing your site to see if you’re offering what they’re looking for, they won’t click too many times – no matter how easy you make it for them.
• Group all like-content together, and let the scroll-bar do it’s damnedest. The scroll-bar is the quickest, most-intuitive way of accessing (a-lot of) information on a device.

Many trendy web designers push a mantra of no scroll-bars – but forget about usability. Why make it difficult for people to find your information?

posted by Gary Venter, 05Feb06