Hot answers tagged cursor
10
Here's the patent for the blinking cursor patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US3531796
According to that, it was invented by Charles A. Kiesling at Sperry Rand. Patent filed Aug 24, 1967, granted Sep 29, 1970. This isn't iron clad proof that it was first invented at that time, but the time seems about right (computers were getting powerful enough that ...
10
Having your cursor slanted would be a UX improvement over a permanently vertical cursor. Many word processors already do this. Here are some examples from MS Word:
It gives additional feedback to a user that the text they enter will be italic, and it is visually less confusing when selecting text. At the same time, I can't think of any reason that it ...
4
Consistency matters in UX, even when it is in things that most people will not be able to consciously notice.
I don't see any worthwhile advantage for this in any application. I've never heard a single person complain that in gmail the cursor isn't mirrored, and so I can't imagine that it is a problem for anyone.
Rather spend the time making other aspects ...
3
Apple used to solve this in Carbon (on page 34) in two ways:
1. Use a double cursor
When you are on a space between the LTR and RTL parts of the text and you type LTR characters, it will appended to the LTR part of the text, when you type RTL characters you will append it to the RTL part.
The cursor is positioned at the end of the Arabic text and the ...
3
Google has added this differing in hovering feedback to make a visual distinction between navigational elements and action elements in the UI. It's really to distinguish the semantics between actions like Compose a new mail and Open email.
So that is basically the strategy behind the behaviour. The reason however, how they feel that this will improve the ...
3
Text cursor
I would consider using a block cursor to avoid any ambiguity between whether the character being entered in part of ltr or rtl text. A cursor kept at the point of insertion will always fail at the boundaries between ltr and rtl text.
Navigation and selection
I think one area where a small change can greatly simplify things, is to reconsider ...
2
I've noticed this too and believe Outlook does this to prevent the cursor from unnecessarily blocking the content of the mail message. Notice that this behavior is induced on the left hand margin of the mail message. Microsoft Word exhibits the exact same behavior, so I wouldn't be surprised if it originated there and was subsequently ported into Outlook. My ...
2
I think the hand on hover is as you pointed out very very common metaphor for actions.
I'd say it's part of a users vocabulary, it's what everybody learns when using the web so it makes sense to use it if you want to optimise for usability.
Like @gotson said, visual feedback would also be appropriate.
1
I assume the user is toggling between 2 modes of his keyboard to switch from english to the rtl language here.
If the user is already using the toggle or some mechanism to switch while entering the text, the same mechanism's rules should apply while editing. So, if you are in the rtl mode, backspace moves towards right, home is on the right and end is on ...
1
I do not think any user expects the cursor to go reverse in any situation ever.
EchoEcho.com suggests that this cursor is available in IE(6+) but I don't see this working in IE9 or in any other browser or even on any other windows application outside Outlook (and on Outlook it is also used in a very weird way).
Information on above url suggests that the ...
1
You can use it to indicate that the action of the mouse click will affect the elements on the right side of the cursor. I.e the way the mouse cursor is pointing.
In your example (and in the left margin in of a MS Word document) you will select the paragraph to the right of the cursor.
A similar example from MS Excel (and probably tables in general in MS ...
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