1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology of scrolling the screen as displayed in accordance with a user instruction for scrolling.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, users of small electronic devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), or portable game devices often view documents such as news, blogs, or novels outdoors. Generally, the display of these small electronic devices is considerably small in comparison with, for example, personal computers. Therefore, users reading a document of a certain length need to repeat scrolling the document in the on-screen display in order to read it.
[Non-Patent Document No. 1]    “Scrolling”, [online], Wikipedia, retrieved by search on Oct. 27, 2009, Internet <URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolling>
When several lines of a document is scrolled or the screen is scrolled halfway, the portion displayed before the scroll operation and the portion displayed for the first time after the scroll operation are displayed concurrently in the screen. This may sometimes make it difficult to readily recognize the portion already read. If the scroll is allowed to occur one line at a time in order to avoid the above-described problem, the user is forced to repeat pressing the scroll button, thus complicating the user operation.