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Page; Don't Scroll


The page is the text designer's canvas. Good interactive text design carefully considers the visual information on any page, and then works to direct competing elements of type, text, color, and graphics. Pagination controls the canvas. Scrolling, on the other hand, forces the reader to adjust the text as if it were a misframed film. Visual balance and direction are lost, and so is much of the author's authority. Scrolling is also tedious. Readers are more likely to interact with a text in which the interactions are selective, interesting, and clearly defined. Be an artist: Think in pages.