Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)

it is believed that the most sieve photo is this Windows XP background and I'm convinced that the most viewed shape is the mouse cursor in 1968 Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a groundbreaking approach to computing in what is now called - the mother of all demos the graphical user interface as we know it now was basically invented here as was of the mouse we have a pointing device called a mouse standard keyboard and a special keys that we have here all the tracking devices hadn't been invented but the blurry vertical arrow on that screen was the first mouse cursor it could change into a cross to indicate an action I don't know why we call it a mouse sometimes I apologize it started that way we never to change it the system had a vector-based interface so the cursor was probably not a real pixel image likely in reaction to the demo at Xerox PARC they took it to a whole new level their system had adopted almost all ideas of Engelbert including the mouse by doing no more than operating this unique pointing device which we call the mouse and the mouse pointer or cursor was a tilted arrow black with no outline why this shape I couldn't find any documentation and I could not get in touch with the original creators rumor has it that it was chosen because it had the best visibility and when you pointed something with your right hand it's at the same angle and of course they had to deal with the strong limitations of a pixel grid sadly I cannot confirm that these are the real regions in the following product star a vertical arrow can be seen but after that the tilting arrow was back and let ish Iroquois and Klingon in the language group area the CEOs at Xerox did not realize what the team had built at team Xerox steve jobs from Apple did which was the graphical user interface I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen in my life okay Xerox adopted IDs from Engelbert and Apple from Xerox Apple improved it and made it more affordable and Bill Gates from Microsoft the company hired to write software for Apple also saw the potential the way it uses graphics and the speed many developers from sarab's moved to either Apple or Microsoft and now the history of the mouse cursor from the two biggest players to keep it simple the Apple Lisa had a stretched cursor in color mode but let's move to 1984 the successful Macintosh and surprisingly the mouse cursor looked very similar to the one on the Xerox system it had a bigger head and shorter tail and now with a white outline making it visible on a white and a black background the next year Microsoft released Windows it also adopted the tilted arrow but now it was inverted white with a black outline compared to the Apple cursor it was bigger with a longer tail from windows one to 3.1 the cursor did not change look at the redundant pixel here I am NOT a very impressed by this drawing apparently it was only removed in the workstation edition of Windows 3.1 in Windows 95 and later 98 the shape was refined to pixels shorter and now sharp with a pixel on the tip moving to Windows ME and 2000 closely for my Windows XP the cursor grew again being 3 pixels taller and one pixel wider and for the first time there was a hardware rendered shadow adding some flair and visibility meanwhile at Apple Steve Jobs had gone and come back the cursor had never changed a single pixel for 22 years but with Mac OS Tiger in 2005 the cursor improved it got a sharp tip and the tail pixel was removed and on top of that it had anti-aliasing and a shadow other than that the shape and size of the cursor remained the same anti-aliasing might look strange but at its actual size it makes the lines smoother in 2006 Microsoft launched Windows Vista and it's cursor was changed quite much the arrowhead increased by another pixel while at the sides of the heads the tip pixels were removed giving it a slightly rounded appearance the tail was much shorter and they made it anti aliased and added a subtle gradient this was already possible in Windows XP at least at some point but only now it was actually done on a closer inspection the outline is blueish but even stranger the outline is not opaque and the transparency differs why is this was it on purpose to compensate for the shadow I don't know Windows 7 had the same cursor back to Apple in 2012 Apple introduced its first computer with a high density display yes it is a Retina display one pixel was now 4 pixels it required new drawings of the cursor the shape of the cursor was no longer bound to visible pixels but the shape of the Apple cursor did not change and probably never will again maybe they'll remove the shadow at some point around the same time Windows 8 was introduced and into 15 Windows 10 the shape remained the same and the outline still a transparency but the gradient was removed and the shadow was turned off by default which brings us to the point where I decided to design my own cursor I've done that before in the late 90s for fun but this time I was simply annoyed I used Windows for work and a while back got my first high-density 4k display meaning a scale to interface for this Windows cursor files contained several sizes and the problem with the scaled windows cursor is that the outline remains one pixel visually half the thickness it doesn't rhyme and makes the cursor hard to see on a light background and the shape is just off in my opinion a terrible designer also the hand and other cursors suffer from similar problems so I changed those two more on that later first how do you change the cursor at all in Windows 10 well that's something I had to figure out too I typed cursor to end up in an outrageously space tablet style environment with text cursor options be sure to resize the window if there is no menu on the left I clicked on Mouse once there I could only change the mouse cursor size or make it black or negative then something incredible happened closely watch the cursor yes you see that right the cursor is replaced with an aliased 2 bit version what changing it back is even more spectacular apparently in the designers of the tablet environment were not aware of the existence of the windows default cursor and the ability to change it luckily I am so I closed the window and typed mouse in Dutch to see if I got something else I did again I got mass options but all different so there are two Mouse option windows with the same name anyway depending on the size of the window either below in large text or on the right in small text is an unnecessary title with a link below extra mouse options jumping out of the tablet style environments in a window that for some reason always appears on the left top I could finally change back to the windows default cursor [Music] sorry the easiest way is type themes and then click mouse cursor Oh Microsoft from what are you doing when I started to design my high DPI cursor I tried a different angle of the arrow but this seems impossible to get used to basically any other shape was super weird so I quickly decided that only people who haven't worked with the mouse before could maybe prefer a different shape as they haven't seen a cursor before so the tilted arrow it was I made the arrow head even bigger in proportion and the tail shorter and slightly wider to make it look even more modern I rounded the tail end something that's not really visible at the hundred percent scale the design is a vector-based so no pixels but drawn by previewing the pixels in the high DPI scale and the final result was done by redrawing pixels making it pixel perfect I then used the same vector for the other supported sizes I hope that you agree that the hundred-percent size also looks better than the windows default I also made one in black and it looks like that I actually prefer to work with the black cursor time will tell then the hand cursor the iconic hands was first seen in Mac Paint later a pointing hand was introduced in HyperCard he used cards they contain graphics and text and buttons that idea was adopted for the internet and became the unofficial standard just like the arrow this Windows 10 hand just looks wrong my hand design actually started as a drawing on paper then made the vector drawing and aligned it to pixels I didn't even consider a different shape because this would only cause confusion and of course the waiting icon or throbber that too was an inspiration as a low framerate blue circle much less fancy than the Windows 7 one almost every waiting or activity icon these days is something spinning around perhaps because a timepiece may emphasize the waiting too much and a complex shape is not in fashion I'd like to reintroduce the hourglass first seen on the zurich system I tried monochrome like the other cursors but that was boring so I did the opposite and used all colors of the rainbow instead this way it was still : neutral but not boring now it was an abstract magical hourglass or something to look at while waiting I hope but while designing that I suddenly realized Apple hadn't done that already and then found out that this beach ball was actually designed in next step all the way back in 1990 originally it resembled a spinning magneto optical disc Apple did not steal it as next was acquired by Apple in 1997 including Steve Jobs I also changed the eye beam or text selection cursor the Windows 10 the high DPI version looks like blown-up pixels apart from designing and trying different sizes I found out that by using black and white instead of the usual negative the visibility improved and the last cursor I'll mention is move the Windows version looks a bit like a medieval cross I made it look more dimensional since nowadays it's often used to change the view rather than move for window I'll spare you the details of the rest but I've also changed all other supported windows cursors I say supported because some internet cursors are not supported in Windows 10 like the magnifying glass which is used quite often on websites in these cases you are bound to the cursors included in the software if you want to see the windows 1 cursor from 1985 at the moment this is still possible as both Chrome and Firefox in Windows use this design for copy and alias my design and animations were done in Photoshop and the cursor files were made in real-world cursor editor making this video was unplanned and actually took more time than making the cursors so I really hope you enjoyed it it gets more than 20 views and of course that you also prefer my cursor design the links to my cursors are in the video description I had the cursors embedded in theme files but because of an ancient Windows buck the cursors are gone after a restart meta managed to make some installer scripts and that wraps it up Douglas take it away and I thank all the rusty very much for coming to the dedication service [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Posy

Views: 108,110

Rating: 4.9540534 out of 5

Keywords: cursor, GUI, Mouse, Mouse cursor, pointer, mouse pointer, computer mouse, computer, history, design, development, Graphic Computer Interface, interface, invention, inventor, idea, original, patent, Engelbert, Mother of all demos, Mother of all demo's, Graphical Computer Interface, pointing device

Id: YThelfB2fvg

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Dekeita]

I like how the guy apologized for calling it a mouse. Like oh geez these computer people are silly, but we call it a mouse, I hope that's alright.

[u/samwolfsam]

Before watching this video I didn't care much about the Mouse Cursor. Now I very much care about the Mouse Cursor. Thank You.

[u/ShadowEntity]

The moment I heard the voice I thought I'm going to learn about true facts about the cuttlefish.

[u/Kevonz]

This guy sounds so dutch

[u/lucasvb]

Actually top notch content. Deserves more views.

[u/INRtoolow]

I think its tilted because its a lot easier to pinpoint what you are pointing at with a straight line going right to the tip.

[u/[deleted]]

Where can I download the hourglass?

[u/Uerwol]

DOWNLOAD LINK FOR HIS CURSORS

He gives multiple options for you to use.

I highly recommend the black one he is using himself. I find it much easier to ready and comfortable to view.

[u/mollekake_reddit]

I really thought the days of downloading mouse cursors were over. I still remember the dinosaur.

I don't see the point anymore. At almost any given time it is a blur to us the way we work nowadays. And we never have to wait so much that we need an entertaning mouse cursor.