There are some things about computers that it’s hard to imagine someone having to invent.
The cursor is one of them—another is the hamburger button. The button is one of those elements that I interact act so intuitively that for many years I didn’t even have a word for it.
If asked to explain a series of steps involving the button, I would mumble something like:
Oh, then click the, you know…the menu button thing at the top. Yeah, the one with the three lines. Whatever it’s called.
It was only a few years ago that someone—probably after one of these fumbling exchanges—offered up:
“Oh, you mean the burger bar?”
YES. The burger bar. Once known, how could I forget? Soon after, I learned of the burger bar’s equally culinary cousin, the kebab button. (This appears as a vertical ellipsis, or set of three dots.)
The burger bar even has an inventor—graphical interface expert and designer Norm Hall. Hall designed not only the original burger bar but also the “dog-eared” document icon and the folder icon that likewise seem so foundational the experience of using a computer that it’s hard to imagine the interface without them.
Taylor Coe 