Lead: Femi Status colour Yellow title ongoing
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Description
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| Type | Usage | |||
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| Fixed Scroll | When a fixed amount of content is loaded into a viewable container or component that is not large enough to display it all at once, a horizontal or vertical scrollbar is shown to enable the remaining content to be moved into view. | |||
| Infinite Scroll | When a large undefined amount of content is available for a viewable container or component that is not large enough to display it all at once, a horizontal or vertical scrollbar is shown to enable more content to be continually loaded into view. | Fixed Scroll + Pagination | When a large defined amount of content is available for a viewable container or component that is not large enough to display it all at once, a horizontal or vertical scrollbar is shown to enable the remaining loaded content to be moved into the current view and a list of page numbers is shown to enable discreet pages of new content to beloaded into | the scrollableview. |
Usage & Behaviour
Choose the appropriate type (as defined above) according to the amount of content you need to display and the content area available. All default browser scroll behaviours should be enabled by default. Operating system and browser defaults such as scroll inertia, scroll wheel support, gesture support and any OS user customisations should all behave as factory designed.
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Currently only webkit based web browsers (such as Chrome & Safari) fully support native scrollbar custom styling to the degree required to conform to our visual design guidelines. It is therefore recommended to leave all non webkit browsers at their native scrollbar visual design language (using the CSS Overflow property) in order to aid consistency in behaviour and accessibility, rather than attempting to re-implement scrollbars across each environment. Our implementation below follows this recommendation. |
General guidelines
There These are five the essential usability guidelines for scrolling and scrollbars:
- Always offer a scrollbar if an area has scrolling content. Don't rely on auto-scrolling or on dragging, which people might not notice.
- Hide scrollbars entirely if all content is visible. If people see a scrollbar, they assume there's additional content and will be frustrated if they can't scroll.Avoid horizontal scrolling as much as possible to improve user efficiency.
- Display all important information above the fold. Users often decide whether to continue or leave based on what they can see without scrolling.
- Comply with the default operating system standards in order to maintain platform familiarity.
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For best results follow all the usage guidelines detailed in this document. For more best practices tips and suggestions, see below.
- Avoid scroll hijacking. Applications that implement scroll hijacking take control of the scroll and override a basic function of the web browser. Scroll hijacking is best avoided because the user no longer has full control of the page scroll and thus is unable to predict its behaviour. User’s expectation of a website’s scrolling interaction shouldn’t be destroyed for the sake of narrative experiencescrolling within scrolling. Users are often perplexed by inline scroll areas because they introduce nested scroll panes, with any inline scrollable areas being placed within a larger scrollable area. It’s scrollable areas within scrollable areas – like nested dreams in the movie Inception! Such complexity isn’t desirable in a user interface design as it causes significant mental overhead because it introduces dependencies between the scroll areas. The user has to keep track of the relationship between the scroll areas because they are interrelated – for instance, the state of the page scroll area may cut off part of an inline scroll area.
Make sure the browser back button works properly. When users follow a link, and then click the Back button, they expect to return to the same spot on the original page. Traditionally, using a browser’s back button will generally set the scroll position back to the previous position rather than to the top of the page. However, some modern development frameworks do not offer this functionality by default. Losing their previous position forces users to have to scroll through content they have already seen and manually find their previous position, hence endeavour to make sure this feature is enabledtheir previous position forces users to have to scroll through content they have already seen and manually find their previous position, hence endeavour to make sure this feature is enabled.
- Avoid scroll hijacking. Applications that implement scroll hijacking take control of the scroll and override a basic function of the web browser. Scroll hijacking is best avoided because the user no longer has full control of the page scroll and thus is unable to predict its behaviour. User’s expectation of an applications scrolling interaction shouldn’t be destroyed for the sake of narrative experience.
Use sticky navigation. Long scrolling can make navigation problematic for users: if the navigation bar (container menu, table menu etc) loses its visibility when users scroll down, they will have to scroll all the way back up when deep within the page or table. The solution for this problem is a sticky navigation menu: it’s best to keep the navigation persistently visible, so that navigating to different areas of the app is fast and easy for users.
- Avoid horizontal scrolling. To improve user efficiency it is best to limit scrolling to the vertical axis only.
Provide visual feedback when loading new content. Visibility of the system’s status remains among the most important principles in user interface design. When using the infinite scroll type, in which your app dynamically loads content, users need a clear sign that the application is doing this. Keep them informed; use a progress indicator to show that new content is loading and will soon appear on the page.
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