Despite being a heavy cell phone user for more than 25 years, it only recently occurred to me that vertical navigation on most phones is inverted when compared to traditional computers. You swipe down to navigate upward, and up to navigate downward. I recently spent time using a MacBook, which apparently defaults to this “natural” scrolling (mobile-style), and I was completely thrown off by it.
I’ve been using natural scrolling on a couple of my own desktops ever since, mostly as a mental exercise, and I wondered…how many of you folks prefer this method?
I grew up with traditional/viewport scrolling but IMHO it was better suited for single-layer, static layouts. Natural/content scrolling has the advantage in modal, dynamic layouts with nested scrolling context, which are now the norm.
Explanation: once we introduce multiple layers of content overflow, scroll events control (at least) one active context inside the viewport. Boundaries of scrolling contexts can be ambiguous, especially when scrollbars are hidden. If the user must “move the viewport over the content” but can’t easily predict which viewport will move, the interface will feel less intuitive to them. Natural/content scrolling bypasses all that: forget the viewport, forget active context, just focus on the content and move it around to see what you want.
This is how I learned to stop worrying and love natural scroll.