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Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

ux.stackexchange.com

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Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#191

Post by isleyaardvark »

treflop wrote: post #31
p-e-w wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UX may not have been as big back then but there’s nooo way no one noticed it being uneven if there was any designer involved. I just always assumed it was an artist’s style choice.

I'd assume it was a deliberate choice because I'd think it'd be easier to implement a graphic with straight lines than with lines just off enough to be noticeable.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#192

Post by teo_zero »

Findecanor wrote: post #136
Cockbrand wrote: post #100

I'd like to add to all of the reasons I find valid (not obscuring what one is pointing at, mimicking pointing with a finger) that everything displayed on the screen is pretty much perpendicular to the x or y axis. The tilted cursor thus sticks out among the rest of the content. As an aside, as a typical Amiga quirk, the early Amiga mouse cursor was tilted in a 45° angle to the x axis, contrary to all the other popula…

I'd think that the original Amiga arrow pointer could have got its stubby style because hardware sprite could only be in low resolution and 2:1-stepped lines did not look very good. The style was changed to a sharper point in Amiga OS 2.0 but it was still slanted 45°. First on the Amiga 1200/4000 with AGA could you get a high-resolution mouse pointer.

In Workbench 2.0+ it was slanted 45° with the two sides at 30° and 60°, it was red with a hint of 3D (light at the top-right, dark bottom-left) and was beautiful! It stood out on whatever background.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#193

Post by BadHumans »

datavirtue wrote: post #184
isleyaardvark wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how far that can take you. I saw a post on another social media site about something being wrong, and a comment said it's not wrong, it was just missing a "not". Which was the exact reason it was entirely wrong. So people can state absolute absurdities and have people agree.

"So people can state absolute absurdities and have people agree" That Reddit mission statement.

Happens on HN all the time too.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#194

Post by MenhirMike »

xur17 wrote: post #173
dcow wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the interest free loan logic, you should have your employer withhold zero and then you put your taxes in a high yield savings account and pay them all as late as possible.

The IRS already thought of this - they charge you interest on the money you owed them (with some exceptions, like waiving it the first year it happens, only charging you if you withheld less than last year, etc).

Yeah, it sucks that the IRS is such a buzz-kill here, with 4-5% HYSA's, it would be nice to just let all the taxes sit there and pay one lump sum in April.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#195

Post by glitchc »

Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

> Fun fact! The hotspot for the arrow cursor was not (0,0) but was (1,1).

Perhaps it's because cursors have a one pixel wide black border around them to enhance contrast, but users associate the cursor's position with the first bit of white (or color) at the tip. (0,0) is colored black for a typical cursor.

Edit: ninja'ed further down.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#196

Post by xur17 »

MenhirMike wrote: post #194
xur17 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS already thought of this - they charge you interest on the money you owed them (with some exceptions, like waiving it the first year it happens, only charging you if you withheld less than last year, etc).

Yeah, it sucks that the IRS is such a buzz-kill here, with 4-5% HYSA's, it would be nice to just let all the taxes sit there and pay one lump sum in April.

I owed a decent chunk more one year due to investments I sold, and left the money in tbills since I knew I was withholding at least as much as the previous year.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#197

Post by glitchc »

handsclean wrote: post #166
speff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

As we know in the age of the internet, truth doesn't matter, only popularity does.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#198

Post by crazygringo »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #108

> It was found that, given the low resolution of the screens in those days, drawing a straight line (left edge of arrow) and a line at a 45 degree angle (right edge of arrow) was easier to do and more recognizable than the straight cursor. Ockham's Razor. It really is that simple. Having had to do a lot of "dot art," in The Days of Yore, I understand perfectly, why this choice was made. Some systems did an "unfilled"…

Yup. The "stairs" of a 45° angle just looked visually smoother than an up-2-over-1 line which looked a bit jaggier. Not an earth-shattering difference, but a difference nonetheless.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#199

Post by wonderfulcloud »

speff wrote: post #123
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

But Reddit is exceptionally bad at this though. It's basically about what sounds the most positive for the upvoter's way of thinking rather than anything else.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#200

Post by dspillett »

glitchc wrote: post #197
handsclean wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

As we know in the age of the internet, truth doesn't matter, only popularity does.

The internet has taught me how many brilliant people there are out there. And how massively outnumbered they are by the rest of us!
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