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Re: X to close

#181

Post by anon4 »

mnw21cam wrote: post #125
kentosi wrote: post #17

I recall being mildly shocked when Windows 95 came out with the the [x] button. I don't know why, but I thought that it was somewhat dangerous to allow users to quickly exit an application like this. Maybe it's because I was used to Windows 3.11, where you had to actually double-click the [-] button to exit an application.

Agreed. But more to the point, I'd like to know what idiot decided it would be great to put a close button right next to the maximise and minimise buttons. It's a disaster just waiting for a mis-click. Since Win95, everyone else has copied this particular feature. First thing I do whenever I do a new Linux install is put the close button on its own on the left where it belongs.

If you notice, there's some space left between the maximise and close, so they're more like _[]...X

Plus, you can maximise/restore by double-clicking the titlebar which is a larger target and I expect most users learn that and almost never touch the actual button.

Re: X to close

#182

Post by noir_lord »

Joeri wrote: post #179
glurgh wrote: post #4

http://toastytech.com/guis/ns08.html NextStep 0.8, '88 vintage.

Those screenshots are strikingly modern compared to the windows screenshots of the era: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.1x#mediaviewer/File:W...

The NextStep was way ahead on the curve for it's time (which is one of the reasons it failed).

I read an awesome piece a while back (and for the life of me I can't remember where) that said if you want to design for the future, estimate what computing power will be available in 10-15 years then buy that for your developers.

In that project I think they spent 186,000 per machine per user on average but they where designing software light years ahead of its time.

Re: X to close

#183

Post by ianetaylor »

aembleton wrote: post #95
kybernetikos wrote: post #67

The Acorn Arthur operating system, a precursor to Risc OS used a sort of fat X icon to close windows in 1987 http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/arthur2.gif

I never used Acorn Arthur but I did use RiscOS 3 whilst at primary school circa '91, and this had an X in the corner: http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/riscos-02.gif I'm sure the GUI design of RiscOS 3 helped to inspire Windows 95.

I don't remember where the [X] came from specifically but there were a bunch of Brits on the Windows team at the time (myself included) and we had a number of Archimedes machines around. A lot of Lemmings was played.

I remember there was nearly endless debate about where the [X] should go so people wouldn't accidentally. I think the desire to make it visually distinct was a big factor.

Re: X to close

#184

Post by scelerat »

crystaln wrote: post #97

If I recall, clicking on the X on old Macs added an X inside the square, so I think there's a step missing from this article.

It wasn't really an X, more "stretch marks" to visually indicate the mouse-down event.

Re: X to close

#185

Post by asveikau »

kentosi wrote: post #17

I recall being mildly shocked when Windows 95 came out with the the [x] button. I don't know why, but I thought that it was somewhat dangerous to allow users to quickly exit an application like this. Maybe it's because I was used to Windows 3.11, where you had to actually double-click the [-] button to exit an application.

I still occasionally double click where the [-] used to be, which still works. Even longtime Windows users have given me weird looks at this. They are surprised it does something.

Re: X to close

#186

Post by macrael »

iachimoe wrote: post #58

As the article shows, the close button on MacOS classic was basically an empty box, but on mousing down on that box, it transformed into something that looks a bit like an x. I'm basing this on what I can see from using [1], but from my possibly inaccurate recollection of using the real thing in the 80s and 90s, some versions of MacOS had an even more "x like" mouse down image on the close button. [1] http://jamesfri…

Yeah, weird. I remembered it being just an X but it had lines in all directions.

Re: X to close

#187

Post by pjlegato »

The use of the X symbol to mean "cancel, close" isn't nearly so mysterious as the author claims. "Cross off" and "cross out" are common phrases in English, and traditionally denoted by an X symbol (the "cross").

There is no reason to suppose that the GUI usage was inspired in any way by exotic Japan. The X as "cancel symbol" has been quite common in the west and indeed worldwide for millenia.

Re: X to close

#188

Post by pjlegato »

gnarbarian wrote: post #93
sbw1 wrote: post #13

Interesting, but the connection to symbols from Japan seems a bit dubious (or at least not very recent). The term "cross out", and hence the use of an "x" to indicate negating something, seems to have been in common use in English since at least the 1920s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cross+out

A few counterpoints. "X marks the spot" Checking a box to indictate your selection on a form or ballot. I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Checkmarks (positive, accepted item) are quite often opposed to X marks (negative, undesired item).

Re: X to close

#189

Post by Guvante »

anon4 wrote: post #64
Guvante wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be curious to know what caused that convention to change in the west. The XBox controller has a swapped A/B pair and uses A confirm B cancel.

The XBox controller is a clone of the Dreamcast controller. If you go back even further to the Megadrive, it had 6 buttons (on advanced controllers) with two rows of buttons - xyz and ABC arrayed from left to right. When the Playstation 1 was released, the two consoles consumers could have been familiar with in the west were Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive. SNES had the familiar ABXY, but mirrored with AX on the ri…

I am just quoting another instance from around that time, besides this is all kind of moot since:

> I doubt SONY copied the competition

IIRC this wasn't decided by SONY, each game used its own variation until a standard was created organically.

Re: X to close

#190

Post by kybernetikos »

ianetaylor wrote: post #183
aembleton wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never used Acorn Arthur but I did use RiscOS 3 whilst at primary school circa '91, and this had an X in the corner: http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/riscos-02.gif I'm sure the GUI design of RiscOS 3 helped to inspire Windows 95.

I don't remember where the [X] came from specifically but there were a bunch of Brits on the Windows team at the time (myself included) and we had a number of Archimedes machines around. A lot of Lemmings was played. I remember there was nearly endless debate about where the [X] should go so people wouldn't accidentally. I think the desire to make it visually distinct was a big factor.

Interesting. That surprises me - I'd always assumed that the UK scene didn't have much influence on the US technology world.
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