Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - long scrolling pages.

Long scrolling pages are sixth mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). Back in the middle of 90's when the World Wide Web was young and its full potential was still far in the future, certain conventions in web browsing had not yet developed and therefore user studies hinted that people don't want to scroll at all when reading a web site. Times have changed and now scrolling is part of our everyday web experience and we don't even think about it. Putting the full content of a web site into individual web pages so that no scrolling would not be necessary, would nowadays result a web site with bazillion of pages and users feeling like being trapped into a maze in that kind of navigational nightmare. Times have moved on and scrolling is now accepted part of web development, web use and web experience. Just keep in mind that this applies mainly to vertical scrolling, because horizontal scrolling should still be avoided because it breaks the natural flow of reading. Just try to read a web page that requires horizontal scrolling and you see soon how this forces the users to constantly scroll back and forth to read the text. So use the vertical scrolling whenever needed (but try still to avoid making the pages too long), but avoid the horizontal scrolling all cost like you would a plague or swine flu.