Can we just stop the horizontal scrolling on websites already? Users hate it (countless usability studies), it's ergonomically difficult to perform it consistently with a mouse, and it always seems "too clever" like someone was trying to think outside the box.
Thats a pretty ridiculous solution, the web is not limited to reading plain text documents anymore, there are a lot of applications where horizontal scrolling is perfectly suitable requirement.
Imagine drawing apps that could only handle a fixed width, or spreadsheets where you could only go as far as the F column
>the web is not limited to reading plain text documents anymore
That is true. It is also true that it is becoming more frustrating to use the web for its original purpose of reading plain text documents, and the need to scroll some pages horizontally is a symptom of that.
The place this trips me up routinely is reading code on GitHub. I think they rightfully boxed the source file view to be fixed width so it doesn't blow out the rest of the layout. And it'd be inappropriate for them to wrap the code in that view. So, we have a scroll bar, which works fine, except on a trackpad on Lion.
Have you ever tried to read wrapped code? It's pretty terrible. Obviously that's opinion, but I've never come across anyone that's disagreed. Plus, your line heights now differ, which makes navigating vertically even harder.
I find 'smart wrapping' very easy to read. (Code is wrapped and auto-indented to the current indentation level.) I wish this feature was far more prevalent and it means that I don't have to worry about manually breaking the occasional long line, the entire line still fits within a window of any size, and the code remains perfectly readable.
I don't disagree that the usual implementation of wrapped code is pretty terrible (because it goes back to the start of the line, thus spectacularly breaking the indentation-based formatting - UltraEdit is the only implementation I've seen that gets it right), but it's still the right thing to do because the alternatives are even more terrible.
I didn't think horizontal scrolling was too bad, until Apple screwed that up. For a while, I could just use Firefox, but they implemented this same behavior, but without the nice animation. So, it's even more befuddling.
It's one of the many reasons post-Lion that I've decided to just move on to another OS. I shouldn't have to adapt the way I work to some OS updates quirks.
Actually, I prefer wrapping over scrolling. Sometimes my webbrowser may not be very wide, and having to scroll left and right to read every line gets annoying very quickly. This is similar to when people use code-view for quotes on HN, it makes reading a pain.
Since a trackpoint can't possibly support two-finger scroll, which is what makes scrolling both directions so easy on a trackpad, it seems like you either would need to drag the scrollbar block or hold down a key in order to scroll, two cumbersome solutions.
You just hold down the middle key and push the trackpoint. Since its right by your thumb anyways, it really isn't cumbersome at all. And I find it much easier and more precise for scrolling long distances than either trackpad or screen scrolling since I only have to hold something down, and releasing it stops the scrolling instantly.
Speaking of horizontal scrolling, I wonder what it would take to make HN verbatim text not get cut off horizontally, when viewed on mobile Safari. Anyone know if HN uses a PRE? Does mobile Safari cut off all wide text in PREs?
All browsers will not automatically wrap text inside pre tags, since the text inside pre is supposed to have both width and line-breaks preserved. Scroll with two fingers inside the box to view whatever has been hidden by "overflow: scroll;". If you find a site that lets pre code snippets overflow into the right sidebar and off the screen, let them know their site is unusable and to add an overflow CSS rule to make it respect smaller screen widths.
Just as an FYI, you can drag those HN verbatim/code text elements horizontally on iOS. It wasn't obvious to me because the box doesn't have an outline.
I know you're being facetious, but realistically the vast majority of websites can be designed to display on lower-resolution displays. It's not a fun experience to read text by scrolling in a Z pattern.
Or more to the point, browsers should always wrap text that would otherwise be cut off, regardless of what erroneous instructions they get from the website. As one writer put it, "anyone who puts up with horizontal scrolling probably has other vices as well."
