Some post on iPhone/Magic Mouse confusion prompted me to reconsider scrolling. On the iPhone scrolling happens by pushing the text: when you want to scroll to read what is next on a page, you actually push the page up - in an upward motion.
Apparently the new Magic Mouse from Apple emulates a scroll wheel - the familiar middle mouse wheel/button introduced by Genius in 1995. Moving your finger up does not move the page up, it moves the scrollbar up - which moves the page down. Therefore on the Magic Mouse to read further the pushing is in an downward motion.
This is confusing for Apple users, and it also makes me think: should it not be the other way around? Why am I scrolling the scroll bar down? Why am I not pushing the page up?
What is the scrollbar anyway, other than a handy model of the page, with the full page stretched as a background, and the part you actually see as a button in foreground? Nothing: it is a model, a construct, a way to show how much you can and cannot see.
However, that does not mean that the scrollbar suddenly is the most important element. The page still is the part that I am looking at. In this way, the scrollbar is actually obstructing my direct interaction with the page.
It should be changed. When I scroll my mouse down, I want the page to go down: showing me the top part of the page, not the bottom.
