Did you ever wonder why we put scrollbars on the right? I always thought that they just feel better there because they are a fairly heavy-weight UI component and it makes sense for them to live in a fallow area.
"The Gutenberg Rule, first proposed by typographer Edmund Arnold in the early 1950s, says there are four quadrants on a page: the Primary Optical Area (POA; top left), the Terminal Area (TA; bottom right), the Strong Fallow Area (SFA; top right), and the Weak Fallow Area (WFA; bottom left). The theory says that the eye enters a page in the POA and moves by the most direct route to the TA, via what Arnold calls reading gravity." -- from a Deakin University class
Alan Dix's article tells a different story. He provides a historical perspective describing systems that positioned scrollbars on the left, and introduces some interesting theories that support the modern convention.
Posted by Sarah at July 15, 2003 8:52 PM | TrackBackI want them on the left! I have a tablet PC, so I hold the screen like a pad of paper - since I'm left handed I can't read and scroll at the same time. I have to reach over to drag the scroll bars, blocking the main area of the page with my arm!
Posted by: Pete Miller at July 29, 2003 2:38 PMIn the Windows 98 Localized version in Hebrew, all of the operating system was mirrored. This was unnatural and Microsoft quickly backtracked in their future versions.
I could suggest a special mode for left-handed persons, with the mouse buttons inverted and all of the scroll bars too, but that would cause massive inconsistencies, IMO.
I think it should be an option / i.e. default scrollbars on the left or the right as a browser setting. As a right hander, I would feel like my wires were crossed if the scrollbar was on the left. I imagine many left handers feel the same way..
Posted by: Steve at August 5, 2003 9:57 PMPersonally I don't care where scrollbars are :))
But it might be more comfortable for right-handed people to have them on the right.
I think it really should be a browser option... like what we can do in a mouse, we can make it left- or right-handed-friendly...
Posted by: mark at May 3, 2004 8:25 PMThe Gecko-tip extension for firebox works well enough for web browsing.
Posted by: jon at April 22, 2006 8:11 PM