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Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

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

#201

Post by Auracle »

wonderfulcloud wrote: post #199
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.

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.

Reddit is a place where you get downvoted for linking something that proves what someone was saying is wrong just because it goes against the site’s overall narrative. Lies are encouraged if they’re the correct lies.

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

#202

Post by wongarsu »

Cockbrand wrote: post #107
troupo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early UX design wasn't always done with as much thought and sophistication as today's software designers (are claiming to) apply. Oh, but it was. Here's Apple HIG from 1987 listing extensive bibliography on the subject: https://x.com/andy_matuschak/status/1447409175596699652 (here's the full PDF: https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Apple%20Human%20Inter... ) Modern "designers" apply as much thought and care as a…

I think the point here is > wasn't always done with as much thought While Apple cared a lot about perfecting UX, Microsoft had other priorities.

Making things intuitive and easily usable was absolutely a priority of Microsoft back then, and they put a lot more thought in that than most modern "UX" design.

Making things pretty wasn't a priority for Microsoft the same way it was for Apple. But I wouldn't call that UX.

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

#203

Post by waveBidder »

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…

there's another reason for some optimism about a voting-truth connection: wisdom of the crowds. As long as there isn't a strong bias to people's estimate, the average will converge on the truth.

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

#204

Post by efitz »

Although the linked page was highly entertaining, I suspect (and this is pure speculation) that the real answer is that, to the people who had to make the original decisions back in the 70s and early 80s, the current design “looked better”.

For subsequent implementations it is likely mostly inertia.

Again this is all speculation but it doesn’t really have to be any more complex than that.

As a side note in the early 80s as a teenager I wanted to write a space game on my Apple //e computer that had a wedge shaped spacecraft like a star destroyer or the spacecraft from Asteroids. I spent many many hours hand drawing the bitmaps for each size and rotation. The shapes always looked a little jagged, except in the +/- 45 degree orientations.

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

#205

Post by sgerenser »

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).

The interest rate is also much higher than you can earn on anything risk free (8% right now) plus there’s penalties on top.

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

#206

Post by coldsmoke »

Someone wrote: post #118
arrrg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use your mouse with the right hand? I’m also left handed and use the mouse with my right hand, I think mostly because my parents bought a computer table with our first computer that had the spot for the mouse fixed on the right side (keyboard drawer with just enough space for the keyboard alone and below that a little extra drawer to the right to create space for the mousepad and mouse when the keyboard dr…

I also write left handed and mouse right handed. My theory is that it’s more efficient when using a QWERTY keyboard layout. The QWERTY layout is heavily left dominant in English and, I guess, many other Western European languages ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Properties : “In the QWERTY layout many more words can be spelled using only the left hand than the right hand. In fact, thousands of English words can…

Not only that, but a lot of the most commonly used keyboard shortcuts are also on the left side.

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

#207

Post by TOGoS »

raffraffraff wrote: post #39

Without reading everything there is on the subject, I'd guess it's tilted for the same reason it's tilted to the left . Humans are tool makers and tool users. After enough time the tool becomes an extension of the body, even if the tip of the tool is mechanically or virtually detached from the hand that is controlling it. The tool maker designed this as a right-handed tool, coming into the frame in the right hand. If…

Dear OS makers: Please make it easier to swap the mouse buttons and also flip the cursor at the same time.

I say this because I use multiple computers and depending on when and where I am using them, sometimes want the mouse on the left. In addition to it "feeling wrong" to use a right handed cursor with my left hand (I swear it physically gives me cramps), having the cursor not match the buttons is super frustrating.

Once I got used to the direction of the cursor indicating the button configuration, it comes pretty naturally to click appropriately, even on occasions where I am using the mouse with the 'wrong' hand (because I'm using the other hand to pet a cat or drink my coffee or something).

On Windows 10/11, it's relatively easy to swap the buttons, but then I have to go into another, much more deeply buried menu (the old control panel that they seem to want to bury but can't get rid of because the Windows settings team is apparently too incompetent to put all the stuff you really need in the new configuration screens) to change the cursor to match. So then there's 5 seconds or so where the cursor doesn't match the button configuration during which my bones want to jump out of my wrist and then I need to go take a break. And for some reason, Windows 10 on my work computer seems to remember the button configuration but forget the cursor setting between reboots, so there's always a minute of confustion, there.

Also, if you're going to write some program with a cursor, DON'T OVERRIDE THE OS CURSOR WITH SOME {RIGHT|LEFT}-HANDED THING! I'm looking at dumb Acrobat Reader. The arrow in that program always points to the left even if I've flipped things in Windows, and then I get all confused when I try to click on the menus as if the mouse is in its right-handed configuration when it actually isn't.

I seem to recall some Linux distro that I used once upon a time getting this right, where there was an option to flip the cursor and the buttons at the same time. But I haven't seen that for a while.

Relatedly, why can't I have multiple cursors? There have been times when it would have been convenient to have a mouse plugged in on the left and the right and just have them both show up on the screen (pointing to the right and left, respectively, of course, with button configuration to match) so I could easily switch to whichever was more convenient at the time. Or for when $handedness-handed coworker wants to drive (just use the cursor that you normally would!). Best I found was some AutoHotKey script that didn't do quite what I wanted. Why does the OS layer need to assume exactly one cursor? Dumb if you ask me.

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

#208

Post by sgerenser »

phonon wrote: post #188
demondemidi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have income from multiple sources and they are not aware of each other. For example, they will all keep paying social security even when I’ve exceeded the max deduction. It is far too complicated to correct the finance departments of multiple companies. I just reconcile it all at the end of the year and get a refund. Got a better strategy I can use?

FICA cap is per employer, not total. Is that what you're referring to?

FICA cap is not per employer. Well, it is from a withholding perspective (only because it would be impractical to make employers monitor withholding outside their control), but once you do your taxes for that year, you’ll get everything you paid in over the cap refunded.

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

#209

Post by jodrellblank »

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.

[flagged]

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

#210

Post by dmoy »

loeg wrote: post #177
minkzilla wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a good thing because it is interest free and inflation exists. If you would have had that money earlier you could have put it in high yield saving account or payed down debt.

It is not interest free. E.g., I was paid $480 in interest on overpayments last year.

It is interest free if the IRS pays you within N days of you filing. If they're slower, then they pay interest.

Where N is some value between like .... 30 and 90? I forget.

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