Web Page Scrolling

[CDarwin]

Why is it that most web pages all scroll up to down vertically? Why not side to side horizontally? Why do pages have this vertical orientation? Is there any practical or psychological purpose to this or is it just a quirk of history?

[mooeypoo]

I think it's because we're used to reading a book like that..

 

Plus, as far as I know (i'll try to find links for this..), I heard that people don't like too "broad" of a screen because the eyes going sideways is a harder "movement" for the brain that the eyes staying relatively fixed when reading line-by-line.

 

So if you have a relatively thin site, going downwards, it can fit most of your view and it is more comfortable to read and get the information.

 

~moo

 

p.s: i just thought of something. See how your eyes 'behave' when you're reading: they go from left to right, then baaaaaaack to left-to-right, etc. If the screen is wider, it's harder to do. Our comfort zone is relatively thin. Plus, I think that we're also used to things going from top to bottom - lists, for instance, we're used to reading up-to-down.

 

I'm pretty sure Asian languages are different.. I wonder if their websites are different too..?

[Mr Skeptic]

That way they look like books. More like scrolls, actually. We're comfortable with it.

 

Don't the Orientals read differently than we do? Perhaps they have different website styles?

[iNow]

Don't the Orientals read differently than we do? Perhaps they have different website styles?

 

I didn't know rugs could read. Wow. Even the ones with tassles?

 

 

Despite your lack of cultural awareness, you raise a very important question. Some cultures do read up to down.

 

How does that impact the original question?

 

Why is it that most web pages all scroll up to down vertically? Why not side to side horizontally? Why do pages have this vertical orientation? Is there any practical or psychological purpose to this or is it just a quirk of history?

 

 

 

I suggest the answer somehow resides in our evolution as predators surveying vast landscapes, and analyzing ground based food sources.

[CDarwin]

How does that impact the original question?

 

It is an interesting corollary.

[MrMongoose]

What? So the way rugs read the internet is less important than the way people read it?

[Mr Skeptic]

Definitions of Oriental on the Web:

 

* a member of an Oriental race; the term is regarded as offensive by Asians (especially by Asian Americans)

* Asian: denoting or characteristic of the biogeographic region including southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago as far as the Philippines and Borneo and Java; "Oriental politeness"; "for people of South and East Asian ancestry the term `Asian' is preferred to `Oriental'"; "Asian ancestry"

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

 

They're not rugs, they are people who are probably insulted by the term I used.

[iNow]

Do web browsers in Asia ( ) scroll left/right perhaps?

[Dak]

oh my good god stop being so ****ing politically correct. Did it never occour to either of you that, perhaps, the thing that orientals find much more offensive than being called 'oriental' is having people assume that they're too stupid to actually figure out when someone's using an offensive term or not? It'd be like if you guys forsed people to not call 'people like me' brits, britons, europeans, etc because the 'correct' term is 'english' and i'll be offended at anything else, what with me lacking the inteligence to differnetiate between the sentiment behind calling me 'english', 'british', 'scotish', 'european', 'a limey', and 'a white-ass cracker bastard'.

 

anyway, isn't 'oriental' more china/japan, whereas 'asian' covers the orient + everywhere you'd expect to find black caucasians (india, middle-east, etc)?

 

---

 

http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A

 

some go from right-to-left. afaik, japanese computers generally display side-to-side, even tho their text usually goes up-and-down in books.

[MrMongoose]

Glad someone has thier head screwed on straight

[iNow]

anyway, isn't 'oriental' more china/japan, whereas 'asian' covers the orient + everywhere you'd expect to find black caucasians (india, middle-east, etc)?

No, in Japan they're referred to as Nips.

 

You can say whatever you want. I work with people in China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea, and I would call none of them "Oriental." It reminds me a bit of "negro" in the US, but YMMV. I also work with people in India, and they are not generally included in the term "Asian," despite it's cartographical appropriateness.

[MrMongoose]

Thats an American thing. In England, Asian is generally used to refer to Indians and Pakistanis, much like it is used to refer to orientals in America.

[mooeypoo]

To be honest, I never liked any of these. East-Asian-Countries is what I usually prefer to use when speaking of such countries as China, Japan and the vicinity.

 

It's not all that about political-correctness, it's more about making sure people know what countries/regions I mean, and not some 'type' of immigrants or nationalities.

 

But I am not sure what type of connotations either of these have in English, which is also why I hate the over-political-correctness some people have. Sometimes I just really don't know that something's "not politically correct", so it's not like I'm being rude on purpose.

 

People pay way too much attention to political-correctness and way too little to the actual intention (and hence: treatment and issues of racism and intolerance) of the words.

 

But that's just my thoughts on it.

 

~moo

[Reaper]

Alright guys, back to the subject matter at hand; lets talk about web-scrolling and why it is vertical as opposed to horizontal.

 

I would say something but I have no idea, and I really haven't thought about it as of yet.

[Dak]

well, in side-to-side languages it's incredibly annoying to have to scroll sideways every single sentance, whereas it's only moderately annoying to have to scroll down every few paragraphs.

 

My screen resolution is 832*624, and incompetent web-designers hard-code their websites to span 1024 pixles, which means that i do have to scroll side-to-side every single line and it's incredably annoying. drop your screen res' to mine for a while if you want to experience it.

[Softix]

The change from 1994 is that scrolling is no longer a usability disaster for navigation pages. Scrolling still reduces usability, but all design involves trade-offs, and the argument against scrolling is no longer as strong as it used to be. Thus, pages that can be markedly improved with a scrolling design may be made as long as necessary, though it should be a rare exception to go beyond three screenfulls on an average monitor.