Thursday, January 29, 2015

General name for the website style that appears in wide pages


The front page on https://trello.com/ is an example of something I am seeing more and more frequently on the web.


It is almost like a set of slides, stacked one on top of the other.


Here's another example: https://www.atlassian.com/ And another http://www.thoughtworks.com/


Is there a name for this style? Is there a history or source of where it came from?



Answer




The paucity of answers show that the industry hasn't settled on a term yet, but my personal preference is Long-Page Scrolling Design. This has been around for at at least a couple of years, being identified as a trend by Usability101.net as early as June 2012.


What could conceivably have started out as a way to facilitate super trendy (and overdone) parallax scrolling features has evolved into a design pattern that's proven to be quite sticky. Here are a couple of reasons:


A Step Up and Away from Carousels



The major benefit I've seen from long-page design is that it frees the designer from having to use carousels or sliders. If the idea is to invite scrolling, then the concept of "the fold" (and the need to cram stuff above it) loses strength.


More Narrative-Friendly


Breaking the page into separate sections (or 'slides' as you've called them) makes it easier to tell a story. First this point, then that, then the other. It also makes it excellent for showing off product features. The example I generally use when describing this type of design is the Moz.com products page


--


As a potentially controversial side note, I think Apple's iPhone product feature page design has been the stand out leader when it comes to implementing this pattern. The latest version of the iPhone 6 design feature page is an superb example of long page scrolling design. Utilizing understated HTML5 animations to further invite and encourage the user to scroll their way through an expertly crafted narrative.


Some Links to Check Out



No comments:

Post a Comment

technique - How credible is wikipedia?

I understand that this question relates more to wikipedia than it does writing but... If I was going to use wikipedia for a source for a res...