From day to day I can see some relatively new fashions in Internet… one of them is to build horizontal websites.
What makes people start to convince to this type of solution?
For a long time, I thought that one of the main reasons why web developers want to build vertical web pages rather than horizontal ones were some kind of standards. Standards said: do whatever you need to do, to protect users from using horizontal scroll bars in their web browsers. Standards said: your web page should grow vertically (but not too much), rather than horizontally.
However the more I meet in recent times with the horizontal websites – the more I start to believe that I was wrong. That were not any standards… common sense and intuition tell us to build such and not the other websites.
In few words: horizontal web pages are inconvenient to use, non intuitive and difficult for user.
Why is that? I can try to guess. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in the case of the horizontal websites, we need to overcome much greater distance using mouse to see or highlight something. Perhaps this is simply our habit.
When it comes to habits… of course we can try to change our habits, as many people often try to do… but is it worthwhile to do this? I think it’s not. Costs of learning a new way of reading / viewing a web page are too high. Users want to use new functionalities without thinking about them. They don’t want to learn new things. They don’t have a time for it.
I do not claim that these kind of websites don’t have any sense, because that’s not truth. There are some niches for them. These types of web pages are ideal for photographers, or maybe designers. That’s all. And why? Due to the characteristic of them – enormous, panoramic images.
Below I’d like to present few examples of good and bad horizontal websites…
Really good example
Bad example. Terrible in use.
Really good example
Not good, not bad. Could be much better, than it is right now. Too simple.
Bad example. Nice design, terrible navigation.
Really good example.
Do you know any other good or bad examples of horizontal websites? Just leave a comment.
and if you want i made this script for horizontale navigation.
slider but adaptable
Excellent site, keep up the good work
Hi !
I’m a webdesigner in the north of France and, well … I think my website is a good exemple
The style is fluid and adapts to every window size …
What do you think about it ?
hey , can u help me by create the horizontal page for my blog ?