Scrolling versus Paging

When it comes to the oldest war of the technical formats, you can forget VHS versus Betamax. There's one still raging after more than three thousand years - scrolled versus paged document displays.

Ancient and Medieval documents

In Ancient Egypt, display technology was based on papyrus - the long thin reeds lending themselves to being rolled up into scrolls, rather than sheets. But papyrus decomposes quickly, especially in colder climates, and the Romans invented parchment in the first century BC, made from animal skin, which was more easily folded into paged format.

Parchment was of a more consistent quality, and kept better, but a key advantage was its accessibility - it's much easier to quickly turn to the middle of a book than to the middle of a papyrus scroll.

But pages really came into their own when the printing press was invented, back in the 1400s. Pages could be much better printed on than scrolls, so the quality and efficiency of pages lept ahead of scrolls for more than five hundred years, especially with standard page sizes.

Pros and Cons: the 1950s

I'd summarise three reasons why, by the 1950s, pages were winning the war with scrolls

• Lower costs, higher quality - due to the printing press
• Better accessibility - easier to 'flick through' a book than a scroll
• Standard formats - e.g. letter, A4, and broadsheet sizes introduce economies of scale

Office Computers

The first office computers didn't really challenge the culture of pages. Word processors and presentation software are both inherently paged, because they're designed to be printed onto paper.

But there was a problem - users had differently sized monitors - so in order to fit the page properly on the screen, scroll bars were added.

And computers began to be used in new ways. No amount of paper can replicate automatic formulas in spreadsheets, and emails are not constrained to a certain page width and height. Spreadsheets and emails are scrolled, not paged (that's why they are a pain to print out).

Browsing the web

Most obviously, the web has changed our culture towards scrolling. Browser makers rely heavily on scroll bars and re-arranging content to fit screen size, especially as the mobile web increases display diversity.

There are some interesting exceptions. Google search results are paged (with the top 10 results on the first page, the next 10 on the second page, etc), but this is done to prevent massive amounts of unnecessary data reaching the user, rather than to fit to a certain page width and height.

And many web designers stick to the old mentality, deliberately forcing layout (particularly width) to a certain size. Lazy designers create flash animations or tables that are too big for many screens.

On the web, the word "page" is often used to mean "the document at a given URL". But it's not usually a page, it's a scroll.

Pros and Cons: the 21st century

Nowadays, the cost and quality of paging software is equal to scrolling technology - it's a simple matter of fixing some of the code. Several other factors are more important, and it's clear that scrolls have the advantage:

• Accessibility - it's easier to 'flick through' a scroll than a page, and it's also easier to adjust to user needs (e.g. increased font size for the visibilty impared)
• Screen diversity - screens come in such a variety of shapes and sizes that forcing a fixed page width and height will inconvenience many users

There will always be a few exceptions that prove the rule - for example, pages to browse Google search results, or niche applications designed for a small set of users with the same screen sizes.

But it's clear that two thousands years after their last peak, scrolls are once more the leading display technology.

Music and the URL

A report in today's Financial Times claims that the market for music CDs is collapsing, and music industry revenues will fall for another two years before digital sales finally improve matters.

The industry has been through this format change cycle several times before; most recently with the move from LP to cassette tape, then from cassette to CD, now to the iPod and iTunes.

But the distribution model hasn't changed so much - consumers purchase the songs and store them in their collection for later playback (either physically or on their PC). This model is the root cause behind some familiar woes:

• Digital Rights Management (DRM) and rampant file sharing
• Inconvenience - endless synchronization issues between PCs and each personal device
• Difficult format changes every decade

It's time for a change, because now we have the ultimate distribution model - the internet - which changes the rules.

I don't think that any music should be stored by consumers. Instead, it should be kept centrally and downloaded on demand whenever consumers want to listen. That way, consumers can not only purchase tracks - they can rent them, or subscribe to a library, or any combination of the three.

Imagine if every track had just one URL - e.g. www.beatles.com/lovely_rita.mp3 - and every time you wanted to listen to it, you had to visit the URL. Your hi-fi, your phone, and your MP3 player would all be connected to the internet. To save re-downloading favourites, you could just request the HTTP head to confirm permissions and the latest version.

Using URLs neatly solves the problems above. The tracks can be accessed from any device, using the same online account. Consumers can't copy and share tracks, because they don't hold them. And format changes are just a matter of a simple internet download.

There are only two things in the way of this model, but they'll surely be attained within a few years.

• Internet Access - every device has to be connected to the internet, at live music speeds. It will take several years before this happens; the iPhone will have Wi-Fi, but not 3G.
• Trusted Cacheing - browsers have to prevent users from independently accessing cached files.

iPods may have revolutionised the music business, but they're also the last vestiges of the PC model - storing data on the C: drive.

It may take longer than two years, but eventually music will become a true internet business.

Only then will the music industry be able to profit from long overdue new business models.

The homepage problem

There are lots of homepages out there - e.g. Windows / Unix desktops, browser homepages, Google personalized homepages, phone & PDA homepages - but I've never really seen one that satisfied me.

This is partly due to the offline / online schism. My windows desktop doesn't show my online documents, and my Google homepage doesn't link to My Documents and the Control Panel. The taskbar competes with browser tabs for flipping between applications. The start menu has been totally left behind by web applications.

But it goes deeper than that. My phone homepage has 12 clear pre-defined options - phone, calendar, contacts, etc - but desktops can't seem to do this (since Windows 3.1, anyway). Desktop icons are much too vague - every web link has the same icon, of my browser. And we can't give a consistent user experience - every different computer, PDA, and phone has a different homepage, even for the same user.

The only real solution is to further integrate the browser with the operating system. This may bring back bad memories of Microsoft in the 90s, but the internet has changed the rules again.

I've listed five recommendations to address the homepage problem:

Reclaim the browser homepage Your browser homepage should be the same as the desktop homepage - you shouldn't be allowed to change it to anywhere else, whether Google or Myspace.

Standard homepage options On the homepage should be a standard set of options:

• Favourites (editable)
• History (with options to delete it)
• News feeds (editable)
• Browser options (editable) - e.g. view settings, security settings. Some of these will take you to other web pages for more detail.

Replace icons with thumbprints and widgets Today's icons have had their day. It no longer makes sense to store five word documents or websites on the homepage, with no visual way to distinguish between them.

Instead, use thumbprints to show the contents of a documents. Keep the description or filenames underneath the thumbprint.

Another common use of icons is to open an application (rather than a specific document). Internet applications, such as Gmail, Skype and Flickr, should be allowed to display widgets, rather than just icons. These will appear as mini homepages in their own right, highlighting important information and allowing the user to click to open the application to explore further. For example, Microsoft may create a widget on the homepage to cover the basic Office Suite, showing recent documents, highlighting important features, and graphically advertising the applications. Best practice would be to allow the user to select from large, medium and small widgets for each application, to control real estate.

Links to files and control settings (in HTML)

Also on the homepage, there should be hyperlinks to take you to windows explorer, help pages, a comprehensive list of local applications, the control panel, and various widgets.

All of these should be in HTML format, so they open in the browser. This includes windows explorer, as per Google Desktop, so that it can show web content alongside local content. The objective is to improve navigation (those forward and back keys), make the user experience more consistent, and allow web content to be integrated with local content.

Use RSS feeds to synch homepage

All items on the homepage - whether thumprints, widgets, or user options - should be stored as a set of RSS (or Atom) feed, and synched with an internet provider selected by the user. When offline, the locally cached version is displayed. When online, the fully up to date version is displayed.

The homepage problem and the internet
There's no doubt that no one has really solved the homepage problem yet. The answer lies in bringing the power of the web to the desktop.