The Scroll Bar

[Campionaki]

Have you ever stopped to think about the scroll bar on the right side of the page? I just spent some time thinking about it, and realized that it's quite strange that it moves opposite of the page.

I drag the bar down, and the page moves up. It's odd. But things like the iPod Touch have that drag and move feature where to move the page up you flick your fingers up on the screen.

Am I the only one who finds this odd? Which way do you think makes the most sense?

[Inner Stickler]

I don't think it's odd at all. The entirety of the bar is analogous to the page I'm viewing and the scroll itself is the section I see. Try thinking of the page as staying still and your screen moving down and it might make more sense.

[Zuul]

If I had a cylinder with paper wrapped around it and wanted to see what was below the line I had just read, I'd turn the cylinder upward to expose it. If I wanted to see what was above the line I just read, I'd turn the cylinder downward to expose it.

But with a computer screen or window, it's not as though the page itself is moving, but like Sticks said it's more as though the page is stationary and the view is moving. So if I had a cylinder with words on it which was covered up by another cylinder with a window in it, to read through the window you'd rotate the second cylinder downward to move the window. As the window moved downward, the words in the window would appear to move up.