Do you avoid having a horizontal scroll bar?

Last updated by TiagoAraujo over 9 years ago.See history

One of the most annoying things when you're surfing a site is to have to use a horizontal scroll bar to view all of the information. Not being able to view all the information from left to right of screen, makes the web page harder and slower to read. The Reader should find the web page easy to navigate, to make viewing the website an enjoyable experience.

Therefore it is bad web design to use a horizontal scroll bar. When designing your site, the page text should respect the user's desire to resize the browser window and have text wrap correctly. Also, you should take into consideration the effect that different screen resolutions will have on how much can fit onto the screen.

BadHorizontalScrollBar
Figure: Bad Example - Using pre code tags and having lines exceed screen size

GoodHorizontalScrollBar
Figure: Good Example - Using pre code tags and having lines not exceed screen size

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