Horizontal scroll bar access5/24/2023 ![]() Horizontal scrolling, on the contrary, has a much higher interaction cost. It’s also ergonomically efficient to scroll vertically, thanks to your mouse wheel, trackpad, or arrow keys. Again, we expect it, so we hardly need to think to do it. Vertical scrolling has a low interaction cost. Interaction cost comprises (1) how hard we have to think about a task and (2) the physical effort required to complete the task. In UX terms, interaction cost is the amount of effort it takes for a user to complete an action, such as interacting with a page element. So, it’s typically best to keep the vertical scrolling on both your desktop and mobile sites. What about touchscreens, though? While the emergence of smart mobile technologies has normalized the sideways swiping gesture (looking at you, Tinder), users will naturally scroll down on a mobile website if unprompted. And many will just assume your page/page element is broken. But, defying this particular convention without a clear purpose will confuse and frustrate visitors more than engage. It’s okay to break a design rule every so often to add some visual flair and spice. So, naturally, users will expect to scroll this way and not left-to-right. Aside from the occasional stylistic embellishment, every web page structures its content vertically. Vertical scrolling is the navigational norm. Even I’m not too keen on it myself for a few reasons: It violates users’ expectations. Opinions on horizontal scrolling skew negative among both web designers and web users. That might sound a bit harsh, so let’s expand on it and discuss why you probably aren’t scrolling sideways all too often. This is because horizontal scrolling is widely regarded as an ineffective and outdated UI method with few practical uses. Whereas vertical navigation is foundational on the vast majority of websites, we see horizontal much less frequently. Here's an example of vertical scrolling on a photographer's website: In other words, the scroll wheel causes the page to move horizontally across the screen rather than vertically. Horizontal scrolling can be achieved by clicking and dragging a horizontal scroll bar, swiping sideways on a desktop trackpad or trackpad mouse, pressing left and right arrow keys, or swiping sideways with one’s finger on a touchscreen. Horizontal scrolling is a page navigation method in which the user scrolls left and right to reveal content from the sides of the window or container.
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