Category Archives: Webdesign

The case for horizontal scrolling

Written by Guillermo Torres. Filed under User Experience, Webdesign. No comments.

I usually think that it’s a bad decision to design a site to be scrolled horizontally. There are several reasons for wanting to avoid it:

  • The browser is optimized for scrolling vertically with keyboard shortcuts.
  • While most mouses include a vertical scroll wheel, very few include support for horizontal scrolling.
  • Very few users would miss the fact that it is horizontally scrolled.

But if there is one site that makes a good point about horizontal layout is Thinking for a Living. If most monitors are now wide-screen and our eyes evolved to scan the landscape horizontally, maybe it might make sense to design this way.

It’s a bold statement, but being such a content-heavy site and having content worth reading. I encourage you to give it a try and see if your reading experience improves.