thou shalt put the scrollbar on the left

David Cramer David_Cramer at PBSCTrain.CA
Fri Feb 20 04:51:13 UTC 1998


Hmmm...a topic that might degenerate, eh, Craig? Well, being a bit of a
degenerate myself, here goes.

I have always been fascinated by all sorts of interface and design
arguments, but lately I have had the opportunity/challenge to really nail
down some of the fundamental issues for my own design efforts. Without
going into detail, let's just say that my job, and perhaps even my
company's existence, could depend on the wisdom of my recent and upcoming
design decisions!

As to Squeak, I have been investigating Smalltalk kinda like the way
suburbanites who never cook anything more complicated than microwaved
Chimichangas subscribe to Gourmet magazine. So I haven't done anything more
than run the basic Squeak app on my Macintosh and read this mailing list.
Sigh...

With that extensive background, I am obviously a boobie...er newbie, but I
gotta admit I just can't make some aspects of the Squeak interface "work"
for me.

Scrollbars (NO, NOT SCROLLBARS! AAAAAGHHHH!)

OK, scrollbars are clearly problematic. I admit that the right side of a
window is not *necessarily* the best place for a window control, since the
right side is just about guaranteed to *not* be located predictably
relative to anything, as variously sized and shaped windows can be open
anywhere on a screen.

And lately, like I said, I've been trying to work out an organizing
principle for interface and layout design, which I'm calling A Sense of
Place, and which basically boils down to location predictability.

     Bad example: the worst interface design decision in all of MIcrosoft
     Windows' GUI, the recent migration of window closing controls to the top
     right corner of windows.

     Good example: any window closing control in the top left corner of a
     window in any GUI to the right of Asia.

And what's so hot about a window's upper left corner? Well, Dan, I think
that your point about the location of text when working with short lines
could be taken even farther. As far as I can tell, adding the basic
top->bottom and left->right reading pattern of most Western languages to
the fact that titles and headings are short pretty well guarantees that the
most significant (therfore predictable) area of the majority of windows
containing text will be the upper left. Since windows containing text have
to be a big percentage of all windows, that argues that the upper left
corner of all windows should be a standard location for main controls,
particularly the window close control.

And by extension of those same basic ideas, the left side of the window is
almost as predictable as the top left corner.

But does that prove to me that window controls like scrollbars should be on
the left? Maybe.

I see two problems with the general usability of southpaw scrollbars:

    1) If we're talking text windows, the mouse pointer crossing the text
you're
       reading is a troublesome visual irritant, both while it's crossing just
       because it gets in the way, and after it has crossed because it drifts
       around over there on top of the first few characters of lines of text
       you might be trying to read and interferes with their readability,
       especially if you try to adjust the scrollbar at the same time.
(Remember
       this little detail when we get to problem #2.)
       So regardless of the argument already established that "left side
       good" (predictability), visual irritation now has to be factored in
as a
       counter-argument.
    2) Not all windows are text windows. Now we just claimed that the high
       percentage of text windows argued that all windows should have main
       controls in the top left corner.

          Q: So why wouldn't this claim support scrollbars on the left?

          A: Because you don't need to close windows while you're reading
them,
             but you frequently operate scrollbars then.

       Form follows function. But functions are dynamic, not static. So if
form
       follows function, it has to look at the dynamic aspects of the function
       in question as well as the static ones. In regard to the functioning
of a
       scrollbar, the fact is that use of this control--if it's on the
left--is
       *guaranteed* to conflict with simultaneous actions taking place in
close
       proximity to the control.
       In any case, since all windows are not text windows, we're now
obliged to
       factor in the differing requirements of windows where the lower right
       corner may be more significant, or the middle, or the top right, and so
       on. As far as these windows are concerned, by the argument of proximity
       to the significant area of the window, window controls should be on the
       lower right, or the middle, or the top right. And we still have to bear
       in mind that controls which are in the best place from a static
point of
       view may be in the worst place from a dynamic one.

In adding up all of the arguments presented so far, I think the placing of
scrollbars on the left is far from a fargone conclusion, even though
convention has kept it there. Convention, as they say, don't cut no ice
with me. Besides that, I've left out another essential ingredient of the
design process, the counteracting of the undesirable features of an
alternative solution. Lifting up the argument that short lines of text make
the left side good for scrollbars and looking underneath it, what makes the
right side bad? Isn't there really only one answer? Isn't it just because
it might not be as easy to hit that distant right scrollbar with the mouse,
off in the boonies, as it were, while you're concentrating on all those
short lines on the left? Fortunately, there is a fiendishly clever solution
to this evil. If you ensure that the scrollbar, and its various parts, are
all relatively prominent visually, then even when you're totally mesmerized
by some really cute short line of text on the left, you'll have no problem
with picking out and using a righthand scrollbar.

Gee, I haven't even gotten around to my problems with flop-out scrollbars.
(When I was little I had a bad experience with a flop-out scrollbar, but
then I learned how to do up my zipper! :-)))) And what's wrong with menus
on every bloody window on the screen. And...

Well, thanks for listening. I shut up now, go bed. (So maybe I should write
a book?)

David

>stp at limbo.create.ucsb.edu (Stephen Travis Pope) wrote...
>>> ...[I put] the scroll bar on the left (where it belongs, at least
>>> in Smalltalk).
>
>Craig Latta <latta at interval.com> responded...
>>	Ooh, couldn't let that one pass... :)  (Normally I would, having
>>witnessed numerous discussions on the topic degenerate.)  Why exactly do
>>scrollbars belong on the left? Because a left-hander put them there in
>>the seventies? Because readers of English scan from the left? And what
>>forces the issue in Smalltalk as opposed to other systems?
>
>It was not a left-hander that put them there, nor that kep them there.
>Scroll bars started on the left in a number of systems at Xerox PARC for a
>very good reason -- namely it is where most of the text is when you work
>with short lines.  It's the same kind of reason as why Smalltalk does not
>put menus at the top of the screen (it's far away).  From the earliest
>days, Smalltalk used flop-out scroll-bars to economize on screen real
>estate.  Flop-out scroll bars do not work on the right because they
>obscure the left side of the next pane over, where you do all your quick
>recognition.
>
>I'm not stuck on left-side scrolling -- I just want you to know the real
>history and the reasons it has persisted.  As the PlayWithMe1 window in
>Squeak demonstrates, scrolling panes in morphic are easily configurable
>left/right and inboard/outboard (they can be changed in place using the
>last two items in the option menu).
>
>Ciao
>	- Dan





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