Why Is Windows’ Mouse Cursor Not Symmetrical?

Our story in the 1960sIt takes place at the height of the work done to make huge computers easy to use for everyone. At the same time, in this period, we are used to using it now and its different varieties can be seen everywhere. peripherals ancestors began to appear.

If the main hero of the story is Douglas Engelbart an inventor. Although we focus on the mouse in this article, you should know that he is involved in studies that make computer use much easier than when it first came out.

Below you can see the difference between macOS and Windows cursor.

The emergence of the first graphical interfaces was also with the mouse.

Until that time via codes to an object on the screen for computers used by clicking or dragging trades would have been considered quite a unique idea. Douglas accomplished this in 1968 with two wheels and a button housed in a wooden case, as you can see in the image above.

Known as the “Ancestor of All Demos” of Douglas’s SRI company, rather than pixel vectorial activity shown in an interface that looks like it leaves a blurry trail behind it as it moves. vertical arrow it contained. This was the first mouse cursor.

Differences in design soon became apparent.

under the umbrella of Xerox PARC Company, unlike Douglas, did not include a vertical cursor in its new system, which Douglas introduced with all its innovations and attracted a lot of attention. Instead of on pixel There was a black and oblique cursor designed. Xerox Alto This system was developed in 1973.

This is how the mouse cursor appeared on Apple’s revolutionary Macintosh.

Unlike the previous one, the white overlay placed around the black cursor made this cursor visible on both black and white backgrounds. Macintosh After Apple, which had a very high success with Microsoft followed this design. Over time, the quality of the cursors has improved as these two companies have expanded their interfaces and capabilities.

A flat cursor could make it indistinguishable from any lines on the screen due to the very limited pixel count.

Besides being oblique, many advantage would bring. First of all, tilting the cursor would increase its visibility on a low-pixel screen and make the object to be clicked easier to see, as opposed to being straight. while pointing in the shape of our hands similarity supported it.

In addition, being flat, some to block objects could also be the cause. This was not the case with the italic cursor.

The real answer to our question: At the time of this cursor, the resolution of the screens made it difficult to use a straight cursor.

This means that systems with low resolution, straight cursors It meant that it would also compromise its readability. As a solution to this 45 degrees bent cursors appear and the symmetry part is also ignored at this point. If you’ve read this far, now you know.

Now to very high resolutions Since we can exit, theoretically there isn’t much that prevents the use of the vertical cursor nowadays. But what we mentioned under the previous title makes the slash cursor usable despite all the time that has passed.

The issue of being symmetrical is about the way we see objects and the design made accordingly.

Smaller looking circle

Here optical balance term comes into play. Let’s give a rough example. Let’s have 2 square-shaped areas and put a square on one of them and place a circle on the other. The circle will appear smaller than the square from these two geometric shapes that we put within the same borders.

In other words, shapes close to squares do not appear larger to our eyes than others. in trend It is possible. This plays an important role in the design of different objects that will be in the same space, such as emoji sets. For this reason, although the design is made with perfect dimensions, our way of perceiving that design to see fault may cause.

More balanced looking circle

In this context, considering the optical balance of the design, done on purpose It’s not hard to think.