As many of us do from time to time, I Stumble on websites throughout the day. Mainly for inspiration and motivation to come up with a post such as this one. One of my interests that I have checked off is photography and lately I’ve been coming across a lot of photoblogs or photography portfolios that are creating layouts with horizontal scrolling.
Why?! I mean, that’s just one of the fundamentals of web design - a big ‘No, No’. Yet I’ve stumbled upon over a dozen sites doing it in the last fe weeks. I’m sorry, that’s just not going to catch on as these people may want it to. Maybe they’re going for that unconventional look and trying to be edgy, but for me it’s just a little TOO unconventional.
There are those standards we don’t deviate from in this industry: don’t resize the users’ browser, don’t use splash pages and DO NOT make the user have to use their horizontal scroll bar - to name a few. I’m all for breaking the rules to accommodate for your layout and design, but when you’re just doing it to be different, you fail.
Maybe I’m just too conservative when it comes to layout and design, but I think there are plenty of you out there that agree with me on this. Even this article clearly states avoiding the horizontal scroll.
The horizontal scroll showcase:
The Horizontal Way showcases websites the use horizontal scroll. Thought I like the design, colors and all that jazz, this site does just what it says, SHOWCASES websites that use horizontal scrolling.
I should have made a list before this post of the photoblogs that use this technique, but I just jumped on this and had to get it out, but I’m sure you’ve come across them too.
November 30th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I’m really into diagonal scrolling…
December 28th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Horizontal scrolling does seem very strange and awkward. Its too much of a strain on the eye. People are used to scrolling down to find contact info/site maps, etc. What are we coding now, in Arabic? I read left to right, top to bottom, kk thx bai!
December 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I don’t know that’s it too stressful for the eyes, it’s just not conventional, ya know. I’m all for thinking outside of the box, but up/down scrolling is the standard and deviating from that should be kept to a minimum; especially if it’s only being done to be “trendy”.