Skip to content
Hallway
0:00 / 0:00

#mousecursor#gui#userinterface

Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)

Posy

470K subscribers • 2 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2022 to 2026.
  • Presented by Michiel de Boer
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

2.9M views7 years ago4 recommendations

History and cultureHistory of computing

Michiel de Boer explores the history of the computer mouse cursor and explains why he designed his own custom cursor set.

History of the computer mouse cursor, or pointer. And why I designed my own cursor... Link to downloads (free) (made in 2018): michieldb.nl/other/cursors/ Music: posy.bandcamp.com/ Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/3zkrmBzisZKngkrd6gXLHg Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/artist/posy/1522538629 Tracklist of this video: 1 posy.bandcamp.com/track/keep-calm 2 posy.bandcamp.com/track/sorry 3 posy.bandcamp.com/track/transformation-bonus-track-4 4 posy.bandcamp.com/track/let-me-explain 5 posy.bandcamp.com/track/instructions 6 posy.bandcamp.com/track/uuu Useful links: Mother of all demos: dougengelbart.org/content/view/374/464/ History of GUI: arstechnica.com/features/2005/05/gui/ Check the CSS cursors: css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/c/cursor/

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a fascinating and detailed look at the history, geometry, and pixel-perfect design of mouse cursors.

dmixon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Challenge: Pixel perfect design”

This is a really good video about how Apple cares about being pixel perfect compared to Windows with something simple and obvious like the mouse cursor icon: link to this video The improvements he made are also quite nice, Microsoft should take note...
View on Hacker News

ChilledTonicon Hacker News • Recommends

On “macOS Cursors”

If you want to investigate the history of the macOS cursor, and other cursor schemes, I highly recommend this video: link to this video + link
View on Hacker News

vintagedaveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?”

Time for one of my favourite Youtube videos, by Posy (Michiel de Boer.) 'Mouse cursor history (and why I made my own).' link to this video It runs through the history of mouse cursors, as well as problems with some of the standard ones, and shows, among other things, historical cursors which were straight and not tilted. It is one of those amazing videos that make the internet worthwhile, is short, and is by the author of Posy's Cursor Pack, link
View on Hacker News

baxuzon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?”

I was just about to say that. There's an amazing video by Posy documenting mouse cursor history, and even provides his own cursor pack: link to this video link
View on Hacker News

vintagedaveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Don't hijack my mouse pointer”

The best video on mouse cursors I've seen, by Posy: link to this video It doesn't exactly answer the question, but I -- someone who doesn't watch video and wants text, articles -- have watched this video twice over. It's worth it :)
View on Hacker News

baxuzon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?”

For a better deep dive into mouse cursors with more information, there's Posy's "Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)": link to this video It also shows how absolutely horrid Windows' cursor designs are. They always were. I still remember making my own sets back in the early 2000s when DeviantArt was the home of desktop customization.
View on Hacker News

naileron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)”

Timestamps: History of OS cursors from System 1.0 to recent MacOS, and Windows 1.0 to Windows 10: link to this video How the current Windows 10 cursor is wonky: link to this video (probably the most interesting part of the video) He ends up fixing the wonky mouse cursor in Windows and makes the download available in the show notes. link
View on Hacker News