* infinite scroll is better than pages/tabs/whatever
Just saying "poor natural mapping" doesn't mean horizontal progress is wrong and just saying "why would you" doesn't make pages wrong.
I'd like to see data to support those assumptions. On infinite scroll I'd bet horizontal progress has minuscule negative impact on usability vs vertical progress. On paged I bet it performs just as well.
And regarding pages vs infinite scroll, I bet pages actually perform much better. Infinite scroll is elegant for us, the developers, but for users it presents a dramatic increase in cognitive load to constantly be orienting yourself in this infinite space with hints of often unrelated content above and below. With lots of content, infinite scroll actually encourages people to scroll which is usually the last thing you actually should do. If the primary means of navigation is via a navigation menu (aka the content needs to be organized, not an article), then why the hell would you dump all the output into one giant bucket of content?
As for “horizontal progress for vertical content is bad”, I’m pretty sure that’s right, but that’s mainly relying on my intuition. If I think about the concept and scroll my page up and down while imagining a horizontal scroll bar, my mind just rebels and thinks “this is not right”. It’s just obvious to me that a scroll bar should be vertical when you scroll vertically.
I can also offer some reasoning: when the scroll bar is vertical, it moves in the same direction as the direction of your scrolling movement on the mouse. This makes it easier to mentally connect your fingers’ scrolling movement to the scrolling on the screen, which makes the device use easier and more intuitive. In the case of iOS and OS X 10.7 and later, your finger movement is in the same direction as the content rather than the scroll bar, but it’s still something on the screen moving with your fingers. But a horizontal scroll bar moving when you push your fingers vertically is too abstract a concept for your mind to intuitively grasp, so it’s harder to use.
I get 100% why it seem like it should matter I just don't buy that it actually does matter (much). http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-science-.... That article is a great example of how completely wrong our intuition can be when it comes to optimizing conversions and I think the same applies to usability.
* horizontal progress for vertical content is bad
* infinite scroll is better than pages/tabs/whatever
Just saying "poor natural mapping" doesn't mean horizontal progress is wrong and just saying "why would you" doesn't make pages wrong.
I'd like to see data to support those assumptions. On infinite scroll I'd bet horizontal progress has minuscule negative impact on usability vs vertical progress. On paged I bet it performs just as well.
And regarding pages vs infinite scroll, I bet pages actually perform much better. Infinite scroll is elegant for us, the developers, but for users it presents a dramatic increase in cognitive load to constantly be orienting yourself in this infinite space with hints of often unrelated content above and below. With lots of content, infinite scroll actually encourages people to scroll which is usually the last thing you actually should do. If the primary means of navigation is via a navigation menu (aka the content needs to be organized, not an article), then why the hell would you dump all the output into one giant bucket of content?