(^20) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Scrolling Through Time
Kim MacCormack
Leesburg, Virginia, U.S.
TWElvE yEARS Ago, my team was hired to develop a web application as a
subcontractor for a graphic design firm. We were to have no direct contact
with the customer. All of the requirements were relayed by the client to our
prime contractor, and then passed on to us in a series of random emails.
One email concerned the screen resolution our artists should use. The previ-
ous standard had been 640×480, but more current research suggested that the
web site should support up to an 800×600 resolution. (Today the most common
screen resolution is 1,024×768.) Even though this was an experienced design
firm, its formal requirements (which we never saw) to the customer stated:
The layout of each page will conform to a fixed 800-pixel width standard and
600-pixel height standard.If we had seen this requirement, we would have immediately corrected the
statement to read, “The layout of each page will conform to a fixed 800-pixel
width standard, to support up to an 800×600 monitor resolution.” Since we
had worked on many websites, we knew that the most important dimension
was the width. Users hate scrolling horizontally, while vertical scrolling is con-
sidered one of the realities, if not advantages, of using a browser. However,
evidently this valuable truth was never conveyed to the customer.
The content this novice website customer provided for each web page was
huge. As a result, very few pages could be completely viewed (lengthwise) on
a 15-inch monitor set to an 800×600 resolution. One had to scroll vertically.