User:Colm/RW&RS-scrolling-essay
Scrolling
outline
Scrolling on screens is an action that can be directly matched up to progress points in computer and network history. This illusion needs unpacking.
structure
- Etymology
- The illusion
- Scrolling vs panning
- Scrolling wasn't always as easy as it is now
- Timelines
- The responsibility of touch screens:
- their portrait orientation
- their limited interactions
- speed readings
- changing history: remembering context over content
- fax paper metaphor
- binge scrolling & distances covered
- parallax trends
introduction
It was a small sentence, in a casual conversation on a lazy weekend afternoon in the studio, after a statement of not really having accomplished much on that day yet, except maybe scrolling a few miles before getting out of the house. I'd never thought of it that way, scrolling, in terms of distance. I'd never really spent any time thinking about it at all, it's so ubiquitous, scrolling. You know, that thing you do with your thumb, or your index, on that screen. Like the tire on a car, or the shoe on the foot, the point that touches the thing that makes the other bit move. (Is it helio centrism, or ?)
A scroll is a roll of parchment, papyrus, or paper, which has been drawn or written upon.[1] The noun scrolling means the continuous movement of text or images on a display screen in either a horizontal or vertical direction. We tend to take the exploratory nature of the scrolling action for granted, a lot of web page design depends on the user being willing to move their viewport up and down the sequence of information.
But what are the metrics of this space? Are their any? Do they depend on the screen you're using? According to what parameters do we change the sizes of the scrollable areas? Is it problematic that we may not all see the information the same way? We're leaning towards a computer world where touch interactions are as important as mouse and keyboard ones. What is their to be said about scrolling?
the illusion
Let's start off with reminding ouselves that this is in quite some ways, an illusion. We're now discussing an interaction method, thought up to solve a spacial issue. The one of more content than physical space. It's not a new issue, and the word remind us of this, rolling up a long piece of text to make the partial and logical reading action easy is a good way of dealing with a spacial constraint. But is this what is happening in my browser when I read along an article? Am I alone in wondering what happens to the videos or gif loops I opened up in my twitter feed, then moved along? Do they play for eternety?
Today, the workings of scrolling are well established, but in the period of time when computers were developping to we now know
Some people think of scrolling in a narrative sense:
- Scrolling vs panning
- Scrolling wasn't always as easy as it is now
- Timelines
- The responsibility of touch screens:
- their portrait orientation
- their limited interactions
- speed readings
- changing history: remembering context over content
- fax paper metaphor
- binge scrolling & distances covered
- parallax trends
The idea that such a space might deserve to be measured has different levels of legibility. We have established how scrolling as an action has become easier, technically, but what about the content that the action enables. Is there a relationship between the quantity of available scrollable real estate and the quality of the content under your thumb? This remark is unlightly to be a result of the development of the scroll, but we can at least say that as content becomes more plentiful online, it's interesting that scrolling is available to interface the quantities.
links
claiming a metric