I tried a straight upwards cursor once. It felt terrible. The tilt gives the cursor "extended hand" feel.
Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#22For HN, I expected a much deeper explanation than "it looked better on low res displays.". This isn't worth our time.
Not all engineering decisions are based on large complex analysis, they don't always have storied back room drama, not all design decisions are made with hundreds of people sitting around analyzing user feed back polls.
Really often times it just comes to do one guy/gal trying something new flying by the seat of his/her pants. And a few people like it so they keep it, and it propagates.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#23We owe so much to xerox, did they ever make money off all that R&D ?
They did from Apple. Despite the lore of Steve Jobs "stealing" everything from PARC, there was a deal in place before Xerox ever showed anyone.
SRI, not Xerox, were the assignee on the original patent for the mouse: http://www.google.com/patents/US3541541
PS: "SRI licensed the computer mouse technology to Apple, Xerox, and other companies. The mouse became commercially viable in 1984, three years before the patent's expiration." - http://www.sri.com/work/timeline-innovation/timeline.php?tim...
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#24Nobody seems to mention a pretty good reason also: standard western text (and content in general) is oriented right-to-left; therefore covering only one side seems to me intuitively less obstructing (we can read perfectly up to the click spot, instead of being confused by what's underneath it)
In addition, it mimics what a right-handed person already does with their hand when pointing at something on a page or on a screen right in front of them, especially left-to-right text (using the right hand so it doesn't block the text). Pointing at something off to the side (outside the width of your shoulders) makes your hand tilt outwards; pointing at something directly in front makes your hand tilt inwards.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#25I always assumed because the point of the diagonal arrow cursor is located at 0,0 in the image, making the origin location of the mouse cursor image and the click point of the arrow the same. Whereas with any vertical arrow cursor, the click point would no longer line up with 0,0.
This is true for most default cursors, but custom cursor file formats let you change the coordinates of the active pixel (see: 'left-handed' mirrored arrow cursors, or crosshair-type ones.). The link 'finger' cursor on most OSes is a default example where the active pixel isn't the top-left one.
The caret cursor over textfields as well.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#26I remember windows 3.1 had a utility for drawing custom cursors. I had great fun making cursors (I was around 10 at the time I guess) and had completed forgotten about it until now! I think that utility was a 16x16 grid, and indeed the easiest to see arrows utilsed the vertical, although actually a cursor which uses the horizontal and diagonal isn't bad either.
And Macintosh had CURS resources, which easily let you design your own with ResEdit or use the ones built into the system ROM:
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#27There are so many little stuff left for ages due to technical limitations back them. It's fascinating.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#28Nobody seems to mention a pretty good reason also: standard western text (and content in general) is oriented right-to-left; therefore covering only one side seems to me intuitively less obstructing (we can read perfectly up to the click spot, instead of being confused by what's underneath it)
Yep: a better reason (than those given on SO) is that it's designed for minimal UX annoyance - it is least likely to cover up what you need to see while still serving its purpose; the asymmetry allows you to more quickly understand which point is important.
It's instructive to observe the circumstances when the cursor changes: there is some indication of context change, but also the design of the cursor in each context is important.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#29I always assumed because the point of the diagonal arrow cursor is located at 0,0 in the image, making the origin location of the mouse cursor image and the click point of the arrow the same. Whereas with any vertical arrow cursor, the click point would no longer line up with 0,0.
This is true for most default cursors, but custom cursor file formats let you change the coordinates of the active pixel (see: 'left-handed' mirrored arrow cursors, or crosshair-type ones.). The link 'finger' cursor on most OSes is a default example where the active pixel isn't the top-left one.
For resize arrows it's pretty much a must.
Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?
#30A very interesting fact! I never even thought about it. Now I cannot stop thinking about all such small things. Great post.