Bye-Bye Paging. Welcome Back Scrolling. Hello Swiping!

When Apple introduced iPhone (and later iPad), nobody thought of it being a revolutionary product that would change our behavior how we use Internet today. Not only these two products have changed the home users behavior but also the business. If you look around today, all you see is tablets and touch enabled smart devices.

“iPhone and iPad have changed the way we surf Internet today.”

Touch and tablets are not new to the world. Microsoft had its first tablet operating system in 2002 called Windows XP Tablet in year 2002 and it became widely accepted in year 2004. I remember buying my first Toshiba Tablet PC (tablet + laptop) that could fold and turn into a tablet when you need it and use a pen to write on it. I wrote my first Tablet PC application in year 2004 using Visual Studio .NET.

“Microsoft launched Tablet PC in 2002.”

So what was missing in Tablet PC in 2004? Who tablets are so popular now?

Well, it was missing touch. Touch! Touch is the one that distinguished iPhone from other smartphones out there. Touch is the one that made iPad, the iPad. This was a game changer. This is what Microsoft missed in year 2002.

“Touch was missing from Tablet PC in 2002.”

I remember post iPhone/iPad era, the UX best practices for Web was to display as much as data on a page without scrolling and to load more data using paging. I am sure most of the websites still use the same concept.

Today, things are changing. People's behavior of surfing websites have changed. People are used to seeing a lot more data in a scrolling or vertical fashion. Hardware (screens, mice etc) are designed to support better scrolling and swiping. Apple's iPad, iPhone, Tablets, TVs and touch screens have changed the way people use screens today.

One of the changes I am noticing recently is the paging concept. In a traditional page that has hundreds of records to display, we usually provide paging with each page display from 10 to 100 rows typically.

Now, Windows 8 knocking the doors, it will change the way we use a desktop. The metro style (Windows Store app) does not have a paging concept but a swiping concept using touch screen and fingers. Now scrolling have changed from vertical to horizontal. This is also called Swiping with touch. Check out touch interaction designs in Windows Store apps.

“Swiping/scrolling is new paging”

If you notice major social media websites that are feeding and display live but a lot of data are serving long pages. Paging is going away. Scrolling is coming back.

So, think for a moment before you design your new website. Think about what kind of paging are you going to implement. On C# Corner, we are going to change paging to scrolling very soon.

Cheers!