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Is there a deep study that suggests to place a scrollbar on the right? Personally I move it to the left whenever possible (Firefox allow this, as well as xterm and emacs).
I know that placing a scrollbar on the left is considered useful only while typing in "right-to-left" languages like Hebrew, but premises for this are unknown to me.
In the screenshots of NeXT desktop, for example, you can see that scrollbars are always on the left side and there are only English characters.
I think of this more as a mental model issue. Imagine if there was no mouse, but rather you were doing it with your hand. Most people are right-handed. My mental model is that I am moving the scrollbar with my right hand. Therefore, scrollbar on the left would indicate that my arm is moving across (in front of) the content and blocking my vision so I can scroll the page.
Of course, the mouse makes this ONLY a mental image and not actually blocking my face. However, as I imagine the scrollbar on the left, I keep feeling like I am reaching over the content to scroll, rather than scrolling from the side.
The scroll bar is usually used after the content of the page above the fold has been consumed.
I.e. the users first look at the content or read it and once they've reached the bottom, they scroll to see the rest.
Since the language determines the order of consumption, the users will have finished the visible content and would need to see more (scroll) when they're on the bottom right part of the page (for left to right languages). Hence the shortest movement would be to the right.
According to Fitt's law mentioned several times, the closer the target, the easier it is to acquire. Combine that with the fact that scroll bars are most often the rightmost element and you also enable the user to "throw" the mouse as far as they want and still hit it.
I would strongly discourage you from putting the scroll bar on the left, even if there are multiple "deep studies" that prove it's better. You will seriously confuse users. I'd consider familiarity a core UI design principle.
There are multiple studies that prove the superiority of DVORAK keyboards over QWERTY -- a keyboard designed to slow down users. Yet, no non-techie types have ever heard of DVORAK keyboards, or care to.
Scrollbars on the left make a lot of ergonomic sense in a text editor; in fact I won't have it any other way!
When you're editing (in a LTR language) your text is usually left-heavy. Thus your cursor is more likely to be near the left edge than the right edge, meaning you have to move the mouse a shorter distance to start scrolling. When you found the text you were looking for, you again have a smaller distance to cover to position the caret.
Having to move the mouse a smaller distance also means that mouse acceleration isn't as likely kick in and throw your accuracy way off.
All the original unix scrollbars (Xterm and old Xt based applications) were on the left, probably for this very reason.
I don’t know of any studies showing superiority of a scrollbar on the right, but I do know one study that suggested the left is superior for most situations:
Kellener, E., Barnes, G.M. and Lingard, R. (2001), Effects of scroll bar orientation and item justification, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 45th Annual Meeting
The increase in clutter apparently is not an issue. The advantage comes from the scrollbar being nearer where the mouse pointer tends to be, and, thanks to a left-to-right layout of content, the mouse is more likely on the left than right (e.g., to select text or a control, like menu item). I know I find it painful to watch users alternate between the Back button in the upper left and the scrolling down in the lower right when searching multiple web pages, especially when they are using a laptop touchpad.
I don’t know why the scrollbar ended up on the right, but I can find only two cases where it was put on the left (NeXT’s OPENSTEP, and Oracle Applications User Interface Standards), so I guess the right seemed like the most natural place. Maybe the scrollbar is expected to be used after scanning the screen, so, like the OK and Cancel buttons, it’s placed where the eyes will find it then. In practice (shrug), it doesn’t seem to be that important. Users don’t seem to have a hard time finding a browser back button, after all.
Despite the advantages of a left scrollbar, however, I would advise against mixing apps with left and right scrollbars on the same workstation, at least, not without heavy testing to be sure it retains its advantages without causing problems on other apps. You don’t want users slewing the mouse one way then reversing because they forgot “where” they are. That could quickly wipe out any advantage for left scrollbars. Besides, with the advent of the mouse scroll wheel, the advantage of a left scrollbar has been diminished.
If we are really reading in an F-pattern (reading pattern), I think putting the scrollbar on the left would create more noise than on the right. No?
And I totally agree with @Glen Lipka about the mental model. If the mouse is the extension of our hand, try scrolling with your fingers on the left of the screen with an iPad. Does it feel natural? Efficient?..since your arm is in the way.
Of course, I'm right-handed and I learned since I'm little that the scrollbar is on the right. Anyway, interesting discussion.
I can think of two reasons to keep the scroll bar on the right:
As a matter of interest, I wonder how many people use scrollbars now that most mice have a scroll wheel. I almost never use a scrollbar. As such, it provides more of a visual indication of how much more content there is.
BTW: As regards the question: I would not be different for the sake of chasing 1% productivity. People are easily confused.
Personally, I like the scroll bar on the right because there is nearly always content down the left side of the screen, while the right side is generally more empty. Putting the scroll bar on the right makes the screen less cluttered.
I am a lefty and having the scroll bar on the right drives me crazy. I have to move my mouse positioned on the left side of my desk across the screen to get to my scroll bar. Why not use the scroll wheel on the mouse, you say? Because when touching the left side your screen you will not have any free space for scrolling. Touching usually results in something opening up. So once again everything is designed for righties. By the way the lefty population is almost as large as the righty especially in the tech industry. Can't find any answer for getting the scroll bar to the left.
There's a paper (https://www.alandix.com/academic/papers/scrollbar/) which argues that the reason for scrollbars to be on the right is that you imagine using it with your hand, and don't want to obscure content by putting your hand in the way.
Of course, for lefties you'd want the scrollbar on the left.
I've recently been thinking about interfaces with two panels, left and right which scroll independently, and I think my instinctive preference is to have the scrollbars on the outer edge of the screen. Why? Because I don't want to have a scroll bar on the right edge of the left panel where is acts as a visual intrusion between the two panels.
But my mental model here is also that I manipulate the left panel with my left hand, and the right with my right, which feels very natural.
