Should Pagination Be Left, Centered, or Right-Justified? Does it matter? Any usability studies?
We are redesigning our pagination to be more usable. In the process a question came up of where to position the pagination relative to the column: left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned. In all the reading I've done on pagination usability (never mind the advocates of infinite scroll), nobody seems to address the overall horizontal orientation.
The designer prefers left-aligned for aesthetics. I believe centered is more common and, therefore, more usable; I also believe it makes more sense. But I do see examples of left and right alignments.
Some Examples:
Left: YouTube, Bing, Yahoo
Center: Google, Apple, Digg, Amazon
Right: Hulu
As I review the examples of left- vs. center-aligned listed above, I can see no rhyme or reason as to how choices were made. So, I'm really curious if there are usability studies about this. If you give your opinion, please let me know what informs that opinion.