- From: Ilya Streltsyn via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 11:52:31 +0000
- To: public-css-archive@w3.org
I'm pretty sure this trend is much older than the flat design. Changing the cursor of "all clickable things" to `pointer` was promoted as the "easy way to improve usability" (sic) at least [back in 2007](https://davidwalsh.name/css-cursors-pointer) and [2009](https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/give-clickable-elements-a-pointer-cursor/). It seems that back then it was already more natural for web devs (and probably many web users) to think of 'pointer' as of clickability indicator, not navigation indicator. I suppose that the main reason for that trend was lack of other interactive elements in early HTML and browser limitations for styling (e.g. supporting of `:hover` state for links only in IE5-6). This forced web devs to implement all interactivity though links and pseudo-links (`href="javascript:void()"` etc.), which inherited the link cursor, and other web devs who learned after such examples tended to treat it as the inherent part of the interactivity. Flash also had pointer cursor by default for its "push buttons" (clickable areas), which might further reinforce the "pointer means clickability" trend. But even if that trend emerged from misusing the tools and repeating design mistakes, now it is the reality that is hard to ignore... -- GitHub Notification of comment by SelenIT Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1936#issuecomment-388342093 using your GitHub account
Received on Friday, 11 May 2018 11:52:34 UTC