The idea of ​​scrolling is as old as the computer world. The first computers, the first operating systems and stable “barriers” of the computer age: 640K of memory for a computer and 80x25 for the size of a text screen (graphic mode is a special thing). Scrolling did not notice the keyboard, but managed to give the mouse a wheel.
Modern ideas about scrolling - not a couple of its history, but what will happen next - even more interesting. The common opinion on the question: "Scrolling - what is it?" - a way to display information in the visible area in pieces, smoothly, page by page, with scroll bars or with buttons for moving through content, vertically or horizontally.
Classic idea
Today, scrolling is usually associated with a browser window or an area of ​​a block element that allows scrolling. The flow of information may go beyond the selected visible area and only part of it can be displayed. Naturally, you need scroll bars left-right (horizontal) up and down (vertical) or buttons for moving around the content.
Button scrolling is something simpler and more compact in terms of implementation; it is found no less often - it has its own niche in which scroll bars cannot be controlled.
Sometimes the ability to do scrolling (HTML) is placed on the mouse or touchpad of a laptop, but in the modern classical idea these are all the same scrollbars: on the right - vertical, below - horizontal. Only vertical movement is available to the mouse wheel, and the rest is clicked on the scroll bar and finger movements on the screen of a smartphone or other device.
An important feature of the classical idea is the scrolling of a piece of information. As in the table: the header should be in place, and the rows of the table should move. Static can be any part of the information on the screen. It all depends on the application, task and skill of the developer.
A block tag can have its own scrollbars outside the entire page open in the browser. The developer can both block the movement of information, and make smooth scrolling, or give it any other effect of movement.
It is not necessary that the scroll bars are only on the right and bottom. Many developers make their own scrollbar options and do not always attach them to the side of the browser window or block element. Some people prefer to take control of scrolling into an independent element. This can be determined by the scope or architecture of the hardware - after all, not all computers are equipped only with a keyboard and mouse, there are other control devices.
Classical clashes
The difference between mobile devices and “keyboard-muscle” ones: finger work, position (and / or rotation and movement of the device) and voice from keyboard and mouse buttons (movement, clicks, wheel) are known problems: cross-browser compatibility, adaptability ... For everything it has long been these or those solutions.
But when, for example, a million documents fly out to the search engine, according to which the scroll is organized, and the visitor is interested only in one, which also went scroll, then what about scrolling through all the documents, when the visitor was disappointed in the current document, and his window still not closed? How to make scrolling in scrolling, how recursion is feasible here, and how great are the chances of moving semantically in parallel across all scrolling levels?
Parallax and adaptive thoughts
The modern developer pursues, by no means always, the idea of ​​carrying the good and the eternal in the form in which it is in demand. Often not because he does not want it, just the resource base (mainly instrumental and semantic) is still largely limited. In scrolling, there are more and more problems every day.
The idea of ​​scrolling with a parallax effect is very interesting, it looks great, eats a lot of resources and is absolutely not adaptive to changing information, its structure and content.
Beauty, indeed, always requires sacrifice - both in real life and in computer business, but the visitor in real life “always has” scrolling in the version he needs and never wonders where he can do horizontal scrolling, and where you can do it vertically.
In fact, in reality, a person is not used to attribute what he is doing to moving through information through a window or window. The concept of scrolling is something from the world of computer monitors on which there is no place for the variety of information in full, therefore many have to be content with a little.
Parallax and its implementation
To date, there are a lot of scrolling implementations using the parallax effect. A good example: the implementation from SONY, which, according to many, is very decent. Perhaps, already a sufficient number of developers have spent a lot of working time and created many options for quickly changing one information against the background of a slow change of another.
Recommendations for using tools for implementing parallax effects usually begin with a general desire to hang them on a couple of elements so as not to annoy the visitor with the slowness of the process of visualizing information. In general, this is an unnecessary rule. It is so interesting to look at another implementation that you can even forget about why you came.
A couple of parallax effect and scrolling is something, of course, bright, but the question is different. Information is characterized by dynamics. This means that chic parallax may be unclaimed if something goes wrong. If the search engine changes its delivery, then it will have to be changed in its parsing, this will lead to the need to change the presentation of information, and so on.
The problem here lies in the features of the modern style of writing programs. All tools are excellent, fully functional and powerful. Experience and knowledge are real and significant. But information is changeable, it lives its own life, and the tasks and fields of application have to be adapted to it.
Delivery dynamics example
Search is one of the main concerns of the Internet. Let us leave the attention of the duty of search engines to wool the Internet in search of changed information, we agree: scrolling is something static according to the logic of things.
If scrolling has begun in the browser window, and even more so when an element inside this scrolling has undergone another scrolling, then changing the search result does not matter.
It really should be different. Information on which scrolling is performed is something other than it was at the beginning; its volume and its content can always change. The visitor, however, is deprived of the opportunity to learn about it. The only option for him is to start all over again.
About scrolling soon
Of course, as long as the window into the world of information is a browser and block elements on pages, physically it is the screen of a monitor, tablet, smartphone or other device, the need for scrolling will remain and it will make sense (how to show information through the window, how to optimize managing the window and the information in it).
However, supplementing this doctrine with the requirement to ensure the dynamics of the information to be displayed is equally important.
Scrolling is something dynamic, that is, not a window with stripes / scroll / move buttons, it is a tool for accessing information of a certain content (perhaps also a structure, but at least to realize the dynamics of the content ...).
The content is changing, its volume too. If the content element is in the visitor’s field of vision, he should receive a message about this, as well as the fact that the viewer has already changed, but actually on the content bar (it’s not horizontal scrolling and not vertical, but it’s meaningful) place traffic information.
In general, parallax is parallax, and modern scrolling is at least three lanes and one indicator ... The two lanes come with the content lane, and the indicator tells the visitor: “Everything that you see, sir, has changed a long time ago.”