Ubuntu Unity has some neat tricks to make scrollbars more usable [1]. Instead of requiring users to hone in on the up/down arrows or the "thumb", hovering anywhere near the scrollbar brings up a widget that compactly encapsulates all this functionality. I don't care for Unity enough to start using it day to day, but this feature struck me as clever though radical.
Aha perhaps it wasn't so obvious from the videos I viewed. I did notice that a few people were quite desperate to turn off the unity scroll bar while on my travels looking.
