So, by the time the Web came about, computers could already load arbitrary amounts of data into a page that is larger than the viewport, allowing users to just scroll, and this was the obvious way to build almost every digital system.ĭesigners could create a page that was full of all sorts of information and just assume that everyone would scroll down to see more. However, since at least the mid ’80s, computers have had windowing systems. Figure 1-A terminal display of a database with pagination controls Figure 1 shows a database with controls at the bottom for viewing the previous or next page of records.

If you needed to display more information than would fit on the screen, the user would have to issue a command to view the next page of content.

The page size was the same as the size of the monitor’s viewport. The earliest useful microcomputers mapped the display of content to the dimensions of the screen. When a Page Doesn’t Work It is sometimes impractical to load all search results or other long lists of data on just one page. So always provide plenty of extra space beneath the end of the content to make this clear-and to encourage people to scroll the content to the middle of the screen where they can read it more easily. More common is the opposite situation, where people wonder whether they have reached the end of a page. But it’s not hard to avoid this problem, so it’s not something we typically encounter anymore. Of course, it is possible to inadvertently create a false bottom for a page, where the user interface makes it look like the page ends, discouraging the user from trying to scroll any further. People already know they need to scroll, and they generally scroll to explore the content on any page you offer to them. Designers don’t need to worry about scroll-bar visibility or providing little animations that tell users to scroll. The first corollary of people reading from top to bottom is that people scroll.

Scroll bar moves down automatically