Over on Stack Exchange, computer
software developer Bart Gijssens revealed the following explanation of the
slanted cursor's origins in response to this question on its design.
The mouse, and therefore the
mouse cursor, was invented by Douglas Englebart, and was initially an arrow
pointing up.
.jpg)
When the XEROX PARC machine was
built, the cursor changed into a tilted arrow. It was found that, given the low
resolution of the screens in those days, drawing a straight line and a line in
the 45 degrees angle was easier to do and more recognizable than the straight
cursor.
As you can see below, the
original, straight cursor was indeed much more difficult to pick out amongst
the blocks of basic text.
And as Gijssens points out in a
later edit, after Englebart created the left-leaning cursor, Steve Jobs
borrowed it for his software followed by Bill Gates who borrowed it after him.
At this point, we've just become so accustomed to our leaning (and still highly
functional!) arrow that anything else would seem too bizarre. Besides, why mess
with perfection?
No comments:
Post a Comment