Michael van der Gulik <squeakml at gulik.co.nz> wrote:

> Tim Rowledge wrote:
> > karl <karl.ramberg at chello.se> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>David T. Lewis wrote:
> 
> >>I hope you tape it on the right side.
> > 
> > No! The LEFT side; text usually ends up bunching on the left side (in
> > left to right languages at least) so this note, like scrollbars, should
> > go on the left.
> 
> It feels more natural to have the scrollbar on the right. I'm 
> right-handed.
Being right-handed is an obvious problem that we need to overcome since
clearly only us left-handers are in our right minds. 

> If I flick through paper, I'll use the right-hand side of 
> the paper to flick through. Ditto for most physical devices; having 
> controls on the right-hand side is easier for me.
We have to be careful what metrics we use to decide upon 'correct'.

Purely emulating physical outer reality is often not very effective
except to make it 'intuitive' to marketing people. A software system is
really supposed to make it _better_ than reality, otherwise why not
write our messages in pencil on scraps of paper and tie them to a
pigeon?

One of the important metrics that ought to be used is how long a task
takes once one is reasonably familiar with it; after all after a few
emails we should be able to go a bit beyond the fake-writing-a-letter
and fake-putting-it-into-an-envelope idiom. There is a clear need to
make the learning curve as short as practical but attempting to make it
flat and then limiting experienced users to the same kindergarten
approach is terribly wasteful.

My expectation - and I happily admit it should be measured properly
before it is accepted as established fact, send me money to run the
study - is that since text (especially code, which we on this list
spend a good deal of time editing) tends to bunch up on the left we
would have our attention in that area most of the time. Moving the
mouse around to select as part of editing would mean it was normally at
the left and so access to the scrollbar would be faster (Fitz's Law
applies reasonably well here) if it were on the left as well. This same
closeness to the centre of attention is why contextual menus can be so
much better than menubars, as well as the vast distances one need to
move the dratted thing on a 30" screen,

Of course, there are other scrolling and control actions to be considered
along with all this; key based scrolling is likely to be more
convenient during text input for most people. Command keys can be much
faster than a menu with a little experience, at least for a small well
thought out group of keys.

Sadly, I know of no studies that point to a way to help cure your
right-handedness :-)

tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Use GOTOs only to implement a fundamental structure.