11–20 of 326 posts
I have no idea, but a wild guess is that with old hardware the "hot" pixel that could trigger the collision interrupt was fixed to the upper left corner of the hardware sprite. EDIT: Another thought that crossed my mind is that with very lo-res screens a corner is the only way to get a well defined and sharp (yet fairly wide) arrowhead. The trade-off would be the shaft being pixelated, but the tip is more important.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The web page which that image is sourced from[0] and the reddit page it is in turn sourced from[1] makes a lot of hand-wavey analogies to optical balancing (which is a real phenomenon[2]) but doesn't make any compelling arguments for why they apply in this specific case. An alternative explanation is that this intentional imperfection exists to match the unavoidable imperfection which occurred when the cursor graphic…
I'm honestly not sure any explanation is needed here. Early UX design wasn't always done with as much thought and sophistication as today's software designers (are claiming to) apply. The first Windows systems had plenty of UI blunders that make the cursor thing look insignificant by comparison, and I can promise you they weren't all about "visual balance" or similar. Lots of them have carried over to later versions.
Xerox parc again. I have the feeling everything we have today was invented in this place. How was it possible that it was so successful and influencial?
The real question is: Why does Windows cursor look "imperfect"? https://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/windows-c...
Xerox Park and display reasons aside, I think that the 2nd answer, with the picture of the hand is the best answer apart from historical and technical reasons.
Random thought.
The real question is: Why does Windows cursor look "imperfect"? https://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/windows-c...
The web page which that image is sourced from[0] and the reddit page it is in turn sourced from[1] makes a lot of hand-wavey analogies to optical balancing (which is a real phenomenon[2]) but doesn't make any compelling arguments for why they apply in this specific case. An alternative explanation is that this intentional imperfection exists to match the unavoidable imperfection which occurred when the cursor graphic…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg
It runs through the history of mouse cursors, as well as problems with some of the standard ones, and shows, among other things, historical cursors which were straight and not tilted.
It is one of those amazing videos that make the internet worthwhile, is short, and is by the author of Posy's Cursor Pack, http://www.michieldb.nl/other/cursors/
I have no idea, but a wild guess is that with old hardware the "hot" pixel that could trigger the collision interrupt was fixed to the upper left corner of the hardware sprite. EDIT: Another thought that crossed my mind is that with very lo-res screens a corner is the only way to get a well defined and sharp (yet fairly wide) arrowhead. The trade-off would be the shaft being pixelated, but the tip is more important.