The case of left to right
I wanted to write this post for a while to share some of my thoughts in regards to Plurk’s unconventional timeline design decision that flows from left to right (LTR), as opposed to the more intuitive and commonly accepted practice of right to left (RTL).
I think it would be helpful to establish some common grounds on why RTL with the latest object appearing on the right side is widely considered as an ‘intuitive style’ when it comes to displaying the relationship between multiple objects within a chronologically organized space. One of the reasons is related to the way the Cartesian coordinate system works. This fundamental concept of point plotting shapes our cognitive style early on in determining where to look first when being presented with a group of objects spreading across a linear space. The right-est point of an object is always considered as the most ‘current’ state of it. This thinking is reflected in many of the interface designs that we’ve came to familiar with.
The right-est point on iTune’s playbar is an indicator of where the song is currently at.
Safari’s download progress bar goes from left to right with the right-est contrast border indicating the latest point of completion.
TV guide UI uses the conventional RTL concept.
So why do it differently?
