Design Principle of Webpage

HTML frame is one of the frequently used techniques in designing a webpage. The majority is to split the screen into two unequal half, having the menu (for navigation purpose) on the left side, while the corresponding content on the right side. Here is one of the example cs143 course homepage. The funny thing is that why menu are usually on the left and content are on the right? Someone suggested that it is a psychological heritage, people usually perceive left being the beginning of an event, so it is natural to put menu on the left side so that our eyes follows naturally from left to right when following the link.

If you think a little bit more, this design is in fact imposing a physical barrier in browsing the homepage. Assume that you are not using a scroll mouse (either a two button mouse or the touch pad in notebook), when you click on a link in the menu frame, and if the content page is so long that you need to scroll down in order to read, you need to move the mouse pointer way to the right side of the screen to scroll, and if you want to browse another page, again, you need to move the mouse way to the left and click. However, if the menu is placed on the right side, you only need to maintain the pointer in the right half of the screen, which tremendously reduce the mouse movement and obviously should increase your browsing efficiency, in addition, you might lengthen the lifespan of your mouse if it is a ball type!!!!

However, the invention of scroll mouse alleviate this problem completely. From now on, you can keep your mouse on the left part and do all the scrolling.

Based on this speculation, we might ask several questions:
1) Is the design of placing scroll bar on the right having some advantage over the left?
2) Is the invention of scroll mouse motivated by this phenomenon?
3) If the majority of webpage design is to place menu on the right, will the invention of scroll mouse be delayed several years?


p.s. I am NOT a left-handed person.