from Human Factors International

"We will add SCROLL BAR PLACEMENT to the long list of really bad decisions that have become standard; and therefore you will use. "

sigh.

"We will add SCROLL BAR PLACEMENT to the long list of really bad decisions that have become standard; and therefore you will use. We are not going to move the scroll bar, they are built in to the browsers on the right and anyway they are solidly expected on the right. We are not going to right justify Web pages, that violates too many principles (although centering of a left-justified page is good). Probably the best thing is to try to build pages so scrolling is not needed."

1) The scroll bars in the original windowing systems (Star, X-Windows, Lispm, VisION) were often on the left. It was the Apple Lisa, followed by the Mac that popularized right scroll bars. And, of course, Windows is just a copy of the Mac...

2) All the data says that long pages that scroll are better than short pages that don't, in terms of users finding what they want.

3) Eye-tracking shows that most scroll bar usage is peripheral (users don't look directly at the scroll bars, they look at the content).

4) This study only deals with an abstract usage of scroll bars. Most time spent on pages is "think time", so the time it takes to move the mouse across the screen from navigation to the scroll bar is only a small portion of time. Optimizing this would not show any real increase in productivity.

Just my thoughts.

Jared

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