https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/52336/why-is-the-mouse-cursor-slightly-tilted-and-not-straight Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Visit Stack Exchange [ ] Loading... 1. + Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site + Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have + Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site + About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products 2. 3. current community + User Experience help chat + User Experience Meta your communities Sign up or log in to customize your list. more stack exchange communities company blog 4. 5. Log in 6. Sign up User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It only takes a minute to sign up. Sign up to join this community [ano] Anybody can ask a question [ano] Anybody can answer [an] The best answers are voted up and rise to the top User Experience 1. 1. Home 2. Questions 3. Tags 4. 5. Users 6. Companies 7. Unanswered 2. Teams Stack Overflow for Teams - Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge. [teams-illo-free-si] Create a free Team Why Teams? 3. Teams 4. Create free Team Teams Q&A for work Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Learn more about Teams Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight? Ask Question Asked 9 years, 11 months ago Modified today Viewed 306k times 631 Is this a legacy thing or does a tilted cursor serves a purpose? I can tell that, the angle provides a totally vertical left edge which helps when highlighting text but what else apart from that? EDIT: When cursor is swapped by the little hand cursor when hovered over buttons, the angle seems to be smaller. Why the difference? * interaction-design * mouse * cursor Share Follow asked Feb 17, 2014 at 9:41 Thanos's user avatar ThanosThanos 4,30933 gold badges1717 silver badges1717 bronze badges 9 * 125 Modern times. For generations, kids used to ask the same thing about bananas. - Max Feb 17, 2014 at 14:57 * 27 When you're highlighting text, the cursor changes to an I-beam on any decent UI. - Kaz Feb 18, 2014 at 6:46 * 10 I have seen straight cursor in some old DOS GUI apps and have also tried it in Windows and Linux - straight cursor just looks and feels nasty like handling a spoon straightly perpendicular to your face when eating (feeding yourself) or positioning your elbow to the center of your body when giving a handshake... Also can cause some Freudian associations when thought about :-) - Ivan Feb 19, 2014 at 4:26 * 4 Also, consider that some text (for cultural reasons or others) are written vertically, having a straight mouse would hide the next letter after the one you point at. Making it go towards the right side and down makes it very practical in many situations. - Aki Feb 20, 2014 at 10:30 * 2 The historical reasons are given by some great answers here. However, I would like to add that a tilted pointer hides as less information as possible. Of course not in all cases, but generally, data is aligned vertically or horizontally. Therefore, the diagonally aligned cursor is not in the way. - danijar Mar 1, 2014 at 1:45 | Show 4 more comments 13 Answers 13 Sorted by: Reset to default [Highest score (default) ] 763 This is the historical reason: Concept drawing of the standard mouse cursor at an angle (Concept drawing taken from document: VLSI-81-1_The_Optical_Mouse.pdf ) The mouse, and therefore the mouse cursor, was invented by Douglas Engelbart, and was initially an arrow pointing up. 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 (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. Share Follow edited Feb 26, 2014 at 23:06 Code Maverick's user avatar Code Maverick 10.1k55 gold badges3434 silver badges5858 bronze badges answered Feb 17, 2014 at 9:47 Bart Gijssens's user avatar Bart GijssensBart Gijssens 17.5k44 gold badges4949 silver badges6262 bronze badges 10 * 160 And of course Bill copied it from Steve who copied it from Douglas ;) - Bart Gijssens Feb 17, 2014 at 13:38 * 9 @jjt the right edge of the arrow is 45@. - Jakob Weisblat Feb 17, 2014 at 17:20 * 19 So pixel layout is the real reason :) To make it vertical and still look smooth the cursor would have to be twice as wide. Also that most def. is 45o, just think about the image... it's a grid.. one line goes down down down down, the other line goes down right down right down right. It must be 45o - Albert Renshaw Feb 17, 2014 at 17:41 * 6 @AlbertRenshaw: ...at least if you assume square pixels--but that wasn't a given in those days (e.g., it wasn't normally true of an EGA or Hercules card at their maximum resolution). - Jerry Coffin Feb 17, 2014 at 20:55 * 36 Your answer got on Gizmodo :) - Ciprian Palici Feb 17, 2014 at 21:48 | Show 5 more comments 425 Want to improve this answer? Add details and include citations to explain why this answer is correct. Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted. Take your right hand and point to your question. There, you see. finger pointing at screen Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jun 17, 2019 at 9:06 Silas Reel's user avatar Silas Reel 322 bronze badges answered Feb 17, 2014 at 18:13 jturolla's user avatar jturollajturolla 3,64111 gold badge1010 silver badges77 bronze badges 27 * 90 What if I'm left-handed? - Erik Peterson Feb 17, 2014 at 18:49 * 67 Ok, that's your hypothesis. Can you give evidence that this is actually the reason, or even had any basis behind the 2D, small, on-screen arrow? Surely if this was the case then it wouldn't be an arrow at all, it'd be a finger? - JonW Feb 17, 2014 at 18:58 * 41 Clearly no one is left handed ;-) - Akrikos Feb 17, 2014 at 18:58 * 41 The average you is not left handed. :( - jturolla Feb 17, 2014 at 19:57 * 61 I actually like this answer the best. I understand the technical answers and I viewed Doug Engelbart's demo where the pointer is indeed vertical. However, this mimics the hand better, looks more natural -- and in addition, it does not obscure the pixels right below the target, which the user is presumably more likely to want to see than pixels to the southeast of the target, when viewing it, due to the heuristic that many graphics employ horizontal and vertical guides. Also, why does it have to cite sources, when it has a picture of a hand? - Gregory Magarshak Feb 17, 2014 at 21:24 | Show 22 more comments 197 In addition to Bart's answer, I'd like to add one more reason. The reason the arrow was tilted to the left was so that the click position was easier to calculate, because the origin of the cursor's bitmap was in the upper left. This saved the mouse tracking subroutine a calculation on every click (its not much but it helped on older machines). Source Share Improve this answer Follow edited Apr 13, 2017 at 12:32 Community's user avatar CommunityBot 1 answered Feb 17, 2014 at 14:40 Jameo's user avatar JameoJameo 1,94111 gold badge1111 silver badges88 bronze badges 14 * 4 @PatomaS: That was a later generalization when machines became fast enough. - MSalters Feb 17, 2014 at 15:13 * 83 While this certainly sounds plausible, your source is just a Reddit post that has no citations in it, so could just be totally made-up. - JonW Feb 17, 2014 at 15:33 * 21 Although this is a theoretical benefit, I highly doubt it seriously informed the decision. Even by the standards of the 1970s, adding two offset numbers is an extremely trivial operation that could easily fit within the mouse update interval. Remember, just like today, there were other pointers in use depending on the application (e.g. text selection, row selection, paintbrush) and they didn't all have (0, 0) origins but worked just fine nonetheless. - nmclean Feb 17, 2014 at 17:05 * 50 @nmclean is right, this answer is completely incorrect. The cited Reddit post is merely a direct copy of this Yahoo! Answers post from 2009, and that post also had no citations. On the contrary, here are two examples of Alto cursors that do not have the hotspot at (0,0): a cross in a circle and a right-pointing arrow. - Michael Geary Feb 17, 2014 at 18:45 * 6 With regard to the calculation time, my ballpark estimate is that it the custom hotspot took between 4 and 8 instructions at 400,000 instructions per second, or between 1/50,000 and 1/ 100,000 second for each mouse update: news.ycombinator.com/item? id=7253841 - Michael Geary Feb 17, 2014 at 21:35 | Show 9 more comments 132 Low level visual cognition In addition to the various answers given, there is also sense in a tilted mouse pointer if one considers the visual processes in our brain. Visual information arriving from our eyes is first processed in the primary visual cortex by the V1 area, then by the V2 area. These two areas recognise low-level visual features (hue, lightness, size, orientation, etc.). The popout effect As visual information is processed by these areas, some visual irregularities truly pop out (ie, they are highly distinguishable), which greatly helps visual search (trying to find an item in a visually busy field). The popular name for this phenomenon is the popout effect. A famous research from 1988 - A. Treisman, and S. Gormican: Feature analysis in early vision: Evidence from search asymmetries summarises many of these popout effects, and the irregularities they involve. Orientation One such irregularity is orientation, and it is neatly explained by the following illustration: 3 images showing many vertical lines and how a tilted line pops out You should find it next to impossible to find the search target in 1 (a straight line in a group of straight lines). But rather easy in 2 - finding a tilted line in a group of straight lines. In 3 it should be equally next to impossible to find the tilted line in a group of tilted lines (of the same angle). Since vertical and horizontal orientations are the most common ones on screens (and in life in general) a tilted mouse pointer will be more easily found. More information can be found in Chapter 2 (What we can easily see) of Visual Thinking for Design, Ware 2008. Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jun 16, 2020 at 10:51 Community's user avatar CommunityBot 1 answered Feb 19, 2014 at 23:38 Izhaki's user avatar IzhakiIzhaki 32.5k55 gold badges6666 silver badges9999 bronze badges 13 * 67 I have a feeling that this answer is totally unrelated to the real reason for the tilt, but it is cool nonetheless. However, whenever I need to find my mouse, I just wave it about wildly until I see it moving. - naught101 Feb 20, 2014 at 1:23 * 5 @naught101: I do that too. We should have animated (spinning?) mouse pointers so they really stand out and we don't need to wave the mouse about to see where the pointer is :-) - Brendan Feb 20, 2014 at 8:30 * 2 MIT Lisp Machines had a cool feature to help find the mouse cursor: if you moved the mouse back and forth quickly, the cursor would magnify (the documentation described it as "big like Godzilla"). - Barmar Feb 20, 2014 at 23:45 * 2 @cr0ybot you can already do something like that in Windows. I had a synaptics driver and it had an option to show circles around pointer when certain key was pressed. I don't have that PC right now but may be googling might help. - user13107 Feb 21, 2014 at 3:19 * 8 @user13107 I'm sure that's actually a standard feature. Control Panel|Mouse|Pointer Options|Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key. Another option that helps find the mouse (though imho it's less effective and more annoying than the former): Display pointer trails. - Disillusioned Feb 21, 2014 at 8:36 | Show 8 more comments 84 Want to improve this answer? Add details and include citations to explain why this answer is correct. Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted. I've always thought that the arrow cursor is shaped similarly to your hand if you were point (naturally) at the screen with your (as typically dominant) right hand. I have no support of this other than my own subjective experience but it strikes me as a natural shape when trying to relate real world interaction into a low resolution computer screen where rendering something resembling a hand would be impossible. [Edit: Someone stole the only thunder I've ever had on StackAnything. Thanks!] Hand pointing at screen Share Improve this answer Follow edited Feb 26, 2014 at 14:54 answered Feb 17, 2014 at 15:23 user43174's user avatar user43174user43174 89355 silver badges44 bronze badges 6 * 2 I think this is an actual "non-historical" answer. Otherwise we would've seen reverse-angle and straight cursors in abundance. - Den Feb 17, 2014 at 17:17 * 3 @Den We have not seen user interface operating systems themselves in abundance. Most of the world is based on several operating system hegemonies. - Kaz Feb 18, 2014 at 6:44 * 3 @Kaz - most of games have custom cursors. Old Dungeon Keeper is a perfect example - it's literally a hand shaped cursor pointing the way your hand would - inclined to the left. I am sorry but this answer is the only correct one. - Den Feb 18, 2014 at 11:46 * 7 It's curious how this answer got 2 upvotes but a same answer with an image got 122. - jinawee Feb 20, 2014 at 15:12 * 5 @jinawee: Because people like pictures and don't read words as much. And the one with the hand has an arrogant 'there, I proved it' attitude - despite neither that one or this one being based on any actual evidence, just reverse-engineered guesswork. - JonW Feb 20, 2014 at 17:06 | Show 1 more comment 51 In case anyone wonders : some less known interfaces did use a straight arrow as pointed in Reddit enter image description here enter image description here Share Improve this answer Follow edited Feb 19, 2014 at 16:27 answered Feb 19, 2014 at 0:48 Gildas Fremont's user avatar Gildas FremontGildas Fremont 4,1851616 silver badges2727 bronze badges 2 * 19 So strange, I wouldn't even think that the cursor could move. - jinawee Feb 20, 2014 at 17:09 * 1 Nobody seems to have mentioned that the browser's "finger" pointer (indicating a link) that we have today is straight, and not at an angle. - TommyPeanuts 12 hours ago Add a comment | 22 Also, there is another answer to this question. As a rule, the arrow mouse cursor must have one sharp tip (vertex) - because it is an arrow :) On the other hand, it is better for a mouse cursor to look good and slick. But drawing sharp tip on a rectangular pixel based display is very hard, especially without anti-aliasing. The 0 degrees (horizontal or vertical) and 45 degrees lines are the only possible lines that look smooth without anti-aliasing. That is why almost all arrow mouse cursors are based on one straight and one 45 degrees lines. As a result, the bisector line has angle of 45/2 = 22.5 degrees. The tail of the arrow is much harder to be drawn well, but it is not so important as well. Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jan 18, 2017 at 9:18 answered Feb 17, 2014 at 16:30 johnfound's user avatar johnfoundjohnfound 1,11688 silver badges1616 bronze badges 4 * 4 An arrow with edges that are vertical and horizontal, or that are +/- 45 degrees, would also clearly identify a point without aliasing issues, but would obscure more of the screen underneath. Having one edge vertical and one 45 degrees reduces the obscured width. - supercat Feb 17, 2014 at 20:15 * 1 @supercat - Yes. And also, such arrow will have angle of 90 degrees and will look too "pointless" and as a result ugly. 90 degrees arrows are OK for some tasks, but not for mouse pointers (IMO). - johnfound Feb 17, 2014 at 21:23 * 2 Drawing a sharp anything is difficult with antialiasing. If you want sharp, you game the aliasing. :) - Kaz Feb 18, 2014 at 6:43 * 1 @Arne - It must be 22.5 in order to be OK. But is usually drawn as 2px:1px ratio. That is why it looks a little bit wrong angled. - johnfound Feb 23, 2014 at 22:39 Add a comment | 8 It is a right-handed world. It used to be that if you switched our right/left click buttons the arrow would point towards the right (opposite of the images cited). This supports that the arrow mimics a hand pointing while providing angular contrast. Without a reference, it is an extension of the desktop metaphor. Share Improve this answer Follow answered Dec 3, 2014 at 19:19 Ken's user avatar KenKen 1,24277 silver badges1010 bronze badges 1 * 4 Thanks for reminding all those of us that are left-handed that it is a right-handed world. Like we didn't already know. Glad someone else has noticed this, though. I wonder why, when you change the mouse buttons over to use the mouse with your left hand, the direction of the mouse pointer doesn't change any more? - Yvonne Aburrow Dec 2, 2015 at 9:44 Add a comment | 5 The fact that the mouse cursor is slightly tilted to the left makes a lot of sense. A very interesting fact: If it were straight, it would take a nanosecond more to place the cursor on the desired object. Human mind is generally used to perceiving elements from left to the right, that is why the cursor is designed into the opposite direction, anticipating the intent of interaction with the element you are about to click on. A nanosecond of time optimization is the closest thing to the absolute idea of irrelevance. With that I agree. However, on a perception level, it makes a huge difference. The tilted cursor becomes similar to an athlete who's always on the start position, ready to take off towards anything you want to click on at any time. It's a sensation that gives you so much comfort without you realizing why. Semiotics, Cognitive Science and Psychology are all embedded into the simple and subtle decision of keeping the tilted cursor, just to simplify by a bit your experience. Why was it tilted in the first place? Well, in its history, it seems like it was only an accident determined by some technical limitations: Why Your Mouse Cursor Looks The Way It Does Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jul 29, 2016 at 17:22 Devin's user avatar Devin 37.8k1515 gold badges7979 silver badges140140 bronze badges answered Jul 29, 2016 at 4:24 Mircea's user avatar MirceaMircea 52233 silver badges44 bronze badges 1 * Light travels one foot in a nanosecond, so I don't think it can make a perceptible difference. - user67695 Sep 18, 2017 at 19:28 Add a comment | 4 Well, the cursor is a pointer, and mimics pointer angles from real life (~30-45deg to the vertical). Pointers in the real-world Importantly, that angle serves to guide the eye down the length of the pointer, in the direction going "into" the screen, towards a single point, in the same way as perspective drawings do: Perspective drawing On the contrary, a straight arrow seems to point in the general up-direction, targeting no one point in particular. Have you ever used, or seen someone use, a pointer stick vertically upwards? That is indeed awkward, and reserved for moments where the object being pointed to is high up and well beyond the height of the person and the length of the stick combined, and can be vague in conveying what is actually being pointed at. Share Improve this answer Follow answered Nov 26, 2020 at 20:32 SNag's user avatar SNagSNag 9,61733 gold badges2222 silver badges2626 bronze badges Add a comment | 3 The angle, the cursor is inclined at gives a better feeling of pointing something. A cursor straight at 90 degree would not provide a good effect.It provides improved appearance on low resolution screens. Also the position calculation would become a lot easier when done from the top left corner of the pixel. Share Improve this answer Follow answered Dec 3, 2014 at 13:04 ashu's user avatar ashuashu 24911 silver badge99 bronze badges Add a comment | 2 A straight cursor would also obscure more of the object underneath raising the same issues when designing for touch interfaces Share Improve this answer Follow answered Nov 1, 2016 at 22:07 Mark C's user avatar Mark CMark C 15111 silver badge44 bronze badges Add a comment | 0 It is actually straight To understand that the cursor is actually straight (one edge parallel to the Y-axis), you must know that the upper left corner of the screen is the origin (0, 0) in computer graphics. Given the constraints that the entire cursor must be visible from the origin and an arrow head that is 45 degrees wide (an esthetic decision) there are only two straight orientations possible, the one we have or one rotated 45 degrees with the top edge parallel to the X-axis, as opposed to the left edge parallel to the Y-axis. The feeling that the cursor is crooked in any way stems in part from the 45 degree head width and in part from the fact that only vertical or horizontal lines rasterize without any pixelation. Share Improve this answer Follow edited 8 hours ago answered 8 hours ago akarve's user avatar akarveakarve 17644 bronze badges 1 * How do you get from this "origin (0, 0)" bit to the fact that there are two orientations possible? Are you under the impression that cursors can only extend down and right for some reason? - remram 3 hours ago Add a comment | Highly active question. Earn 10 reputation (not counting the association bonus) in order to answer this question. The reputation requirement helps protect this question from spam and non-answer activity. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged * interaction-design * mouse * cursor or ask your own question. * Featured on Meta * What would you like to change about the moderator election process? * Updates to the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) - January 2024 * Sites can now request to enable a banner to warn about their policy on... Linked 69 Why does the cursor have a tail? 11 Who created the Mac Mickey pointer cursor? 8 Why is the button to open a microwave door always hard to push? 2 Why is the hand symbol used for the hand-cursor? 1 Why are jail bars vertical and not horizontal? -5 Is the 'magnifying glass search icon' right-handed because most people are right-handed? 0 Is there any working straight or reflected mouse cursor theme? Related 21 Who invented the blinking cursor 11 Who created the Mac Mickey pointer cursor? 2 Why is the hand symbol used for the hand-cursor? 6 Using pointer mouse cursor shape on controls 1 Are cursor trail effects frowned upon and why? 2 Keyboard shortcuts for special zoom mode 1 when to use "wait" and when "busy" mouse cursor Hot Network Questions * What would be easily missed, but undeniable, proof of life from non-advanced detectors? * How to make searches not appear at the bottom of the window * How can I make a fan game entirely legally? * Productive Squares * usage of Bu You in the Lost in Russia movie * Which CPUs have implemented trap on signed integer overflow? * Create auto alias of every folder in a specific folder in bash_profile or bash_alias * Did Allied bombers return from enemy airspace with undropped bombs? * What are the differences between BPE and byte-level BPE? * What is this strange and possibly old white 2x4 brick? * "Ghost", as in I am * Can The President counter Mayorkas impeachment with a pardon? * Trouble in rewiring a 4-way after removing transformer that was connected to the middle box * Can I power a tree house from a "permanently" installed extension cord? * Two Rooks v/s Queen End game * Is it possible to have a CC-SA turn into a CC-ND * Installing Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop into new desktop nvdia computer * Should reducing and simplifying explanations be a core aspect of Philosophical practice? * Serving HTTPS images with Minio * Frequencies are inherently positive physical quantity.... what does it mean? * What is this manga that has a lot of superhero references? * How does Godel's encoding of mathematical statements into integers enable self-referential propositions? * How can I change the shower head location to not aim right at the bench? * How to know if a continuous function can be represented by a finite sum of sinusoids? more hot questions Question feed Subscribe to RSS Question feed To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. [https://ux.stackexch] * User Experience * Tour * Help * Chat * Contact * Feedback Company * Stack Overflow * Teams * Advertising * Collectives * Talent * About * Press * Legal * Privacy Policy * Terms of Service * Cookie Settings * Cookie Policy Stack Exchange Network * Technology * Culture & recreation * Life & arts * Science * Professional * Business * API * Data * Blog * Facebook * Twitter * LinkedIn * Instagram Site design / logo (c) 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. rev 2024.2.1.4133