Scrolling reveals more — Computing, 4–6
A screen may be too small to show everything at once. Scrolling moves the part you can see so you can find what is above or below.
The screen is a small window
A page can be longer or wider than the screen. The screen shows only a window-sized piece of it, while the rest is still there. When you scroll, you move this window to see more, without making new information appear.
Why scroll?
Phones and tablets cannot show a whole long page at once, and making every page fit would make the words tiny. Scrolling solves this space problem: you keep readable text and travel through it a piece at a time. It began as a way to handle more information than a screen could hold.
Find the hidden picture
A page shows three animal pictures, but you need the fourth one. First, place your finger near the bottom and move upwards, or turn the wheel down. Next, stop when the next picture comes into view. You did not lose the first three: you moved the window lower on the same page.
More movement is not always better
You may swipe very far because you want to find the next thing quickly. That can jump past it, just as turning several pages at once can skip a story part. Move a little, look, and move again; the amount you scroll decides which part of the page you see.
Where scrolling helps
You scroll through a recipe to find the next step, a photo gallery to see older pictures, or a list of songs to reach one lower down. The page has not necessarily loaded something new each time; often you are simply viewing another part that was already there.
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