9 ms·

X to close

• lukeh 12y ago
  Also: NEXTSTEP.
• bemmu 12y ago
  In the Atari TOS screenshots, other icons such as arrows are black on white background. If the icons in upper left and right are also like that, then the upper left icon is actually four little triangles pointing inwards and not an X. The one on the right is four little triangles pointing outwards. (Or it could be an X)
  • empressplay 12y ago
    Atari ST users seemed to see it as an X -- so whether or not it was intentional on the part of the designer, it's not that hard to see how one of these users could have then translated that misconception to the Windows 95 GUI. It's all about perception...
• glurgh 12y ago
  http://toastytech.com/guis/ns08.html http://toastytech.com/guis/ns08.html NextStep 0.8, '88 vintage.
  • reedlaw 12y ago
    Good find. That's clearly an [X] in the upper-right corner.
    • ekianjo 12y ago
      Yeah, but still more recent than Atari's Gem.
      • glurgh 12y ago
        The Atari Gem thing is not an X, it's actually supposed to be a gem. It's just confusing because of the low-res image. Take a look at http://toastytech.com/guis/gem11menu.png http://toastytech.com/guis/gem11menu.png
        • empressplay 12y ago
          That's not GEMTOS, that's GEM for DOS... big difference...
          • glurgh 12y ago
            I was looking at the wrong end of the window, to boot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TOS#mediaviewer/File:ST_Desktop.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TOS#mediaviewer/File:ST_D... Looks pretty X-like. It seems GEM itself was licensed from Digital Research but their GEM didn't use X. Edit: Fixed DEC to DR, as pointed out by reply comment below.
            • ahy1 12y ago
              I doubt DEC had anything to do with GEM. It was a product of Digital Research (same company that gave us CP/M, MP/M and DR-DOS)
              • glurgh 12y ago
                They didn't, I just brainfarted. You know, http://vt100.net/dec/alpha_era_logo_small.png http://vt100.net/dec/alpha_era_logo_small.png and all that.
  • empressplay 12y ago
    Even so, Atari GEM could have influenced NeXT, which then influenced Windows 95... it's a cool bit of retro-chic =)
    • glurgh 12y ago
      It's possible, sadly there is no folklore.org for Nextstep. In the end, both the X and things like context-menus were made ubiquitous by Windows '95.
  • Joeri 12y ago
    Those screenshots are strikingly modern compared to the windows screenshots of the era: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.1x#mediaviewer/File:Windows_2.1.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.1x#mediaviewer/File:W...
    • noir_lord 12y ago
      The NextStep was way ahead on the curve for it's time (which is one of the reasons it failed). I read an awesome piece a while back (and for the life of me I can't remember where) that said if you want to design for the future, estimate what computing power will be available in 10-15 years then buy that for your developers. In that project I think they spent 186,000 per machine per user on average but they where designing software light years ahead of its time.
      • frozenport 12y ago
        I don't think it worked out for them? The systems were way to expensive for most users.
        • noir_lord 12y ago
          The NextStep didn't work out for a bunch of reasons cost been one of the major ones. The other project wasn't trying to create a product they where trying to capture a sense of what hardware would be on every desk in 10 years and design for that, in effect skating to where the puck will be rather than where it is. I wish I could remember where I read it :|.
  • abrowne 12y ago
    Windows 95 looks quite similar to NeXTSTEP, with very similar gray window decorations and beveled (might be the wrong word) borders and buttons. It could be a design of times kind of thing, but to me it looks very "inspired".
    • mschaef 12y ago
      For what it's worth, I remember thinking that Windows95 was 'inspired' by NeXTStep when it was new. The NeXTStep machines themselves were pretty amazing for their late-80's origin. They had (and effectively used) 4-level 1-megapixel displays at a time when PC's were largely stuck at 640x480 or worse.
      • Gormo 12y ago
        High screen resolutions were certainly possible on DOS PCs of the era, but since PCs were an open platform, developers would often target their software at the lowest common denominator of hardware, so outside of specific niche markets, they didn't typically produce DOS applications intended for high-resolution displays. On top of that, the DOS market in that era always preferred to make the tradeoff in favor of higher color depths rather than higher resolutions. At 640x480, a VGA display contemporary to NeXTStep could display 16 colors, and at 320x200, 256 colors.
        • mschaef 12y ago
          > On top of that, the DOS market in that era always preferred to make the tradeoff in favor of higher color depths rather than higher resolutions. I think I'd characterize it a little differently: I remember games favoring 256-color modes (320x200, ModeX, etc.) and productivity applications favoring higher resolution. At the time, having both high bit depths and high resolution at the same time was asking too much of the hardware. To put it in perspective, for a while, my desktop PC was an older generation 486/33. When I say 'older generation', what I mainly mean is that it was one of the last machines that lacked a local bus of any kind. This put the video board behind an ISA-bus, which was lucky to sustain 8MB/sec shared across all peripherals. Just looking at the bus, it couldn't update a full 1024x768 desktop at more than 10Hz. (320x200 was well over 100Hz).
  • linuxlizard 12y ago
    NextStep, yes. The first time I saw Win95 (Chicago beta), I decided it was a rip-off of the NextStep UI.
  • peapicker 12y ago
    I came to post the same thing... I had NeXT cube serial number 32 on my desk at Los Alamos as an intern back in '88 running NextStep 0.8 and clearly remember how amazing the machine was. We got the first 50 of the line (I think) because a guy in the Laboratory was a friend of Jobs, and Jobs wanted to promote the box as the perfect research tool thanks to Mathematica and the like. Those were fun times!
• nwp90 12y ago
  No 'x' to close vi? Was that not always there? I've certainly been using it as long as I can remember; that's not to say it's always been there though - does anyone know when it was first available? Edit: seems Wordstar used X too, probably starting in 1978.
  • atsaloli 12y ago
    Well, that's different. You are talking about an "x" that you type in, as opposed to an "x" you can click on. To answer your question, "x" (short for eXit) was available in vi from the beginning: ZZ Exits the editor. (Same as :xCR) Source: Bill Joy's "An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi" http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/vi/vi_editor__bill_joy.pdf http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/vi/vi_editor__bill_joy.pdf
    • nwp90 12y ago
      Yes, it's different, but the article was trying argue that since "X" wasn't used in that context at the time it was introduced as a GUI element, the GUI element couldn't possibly be referencing the letter as a way of closing a program. While I agree that it's unlikely that the GUI "X" refers to a letter "X", that's not a valid argument for that position. Edit: and thanks for the vi ref.
      • atsaloli 12y ago
        Understood, and you're welcome!
  • tatterdemalion 12y ago
    Nano also uses Ctrl+X to exit.
    • gpvos 12y ago
      nano is from 1999, so hardly relevant.
      • 12y ago
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• colmmacc 12y ago
  'X' always seemed fitting for another, more poetic, reason: The kiss of death (X also represents a kiss). I wonder if it was in the designers mind.
• bhauer 12y ago
  As an Atari ST user from 1985 to roughly 1993, I wasn't expecting the author would actually mention GEM/TOS. I was pleasantly surprised when I scrolled down and, lo, there it is. That said, since the "X" in this case is white on a black background, I always interpreted the icon as four arrows pointing inward to indicate a shrinking/disappearing motion. In fact, when you closed a window, GEM would play an (inelegant) animation akin to the Macintosh of the time, composed of a sequence of boxes first shrinking from the size of the window to a small box and then shuffling that off to the top left of the screen. As bemmu points out, the maximize button (at the top right in a GEM/TOS window) is four arrows pointing outward. Incidentally, GEM did not have a notion of "minimize." Put another way, although I find the Japanese inspiration argument interesting, I don't think there's a whole lot to it. I think it's a fun coincidence. In any event, thank you for the trip down memory lane and for the fun screen grabs!
  • ekianjo 12y ago
    I don't think there is much relevance in the Japanese argument. One funny detail is that Sony actually inverted in their games the meaning of Round and X for western markets -> making X act as "validate" and Round as "Back/Cancel", the exact opposite of what they do in Japan. As for "X being a true icon", I don't know. For me, it could stand as well as an abbreviation for "eXit" -> X. The AmigaOS Workbench used (and still uses) a dot instead of a X. It's just a matter of conventions.
    • Bahamut 12y ago
      Was this true in all of their games? I know early PlayStation games did use O for confirm and X for cancel - even a few years into its lifetime, this was the case as Final Fantasy VII is an obvious example.
      • gambiting 12y ago
        It depends on the version of the console. Japanese Playstation Portable and Vita have the O button as "accept" - but I have noticed that not all games respect that. European games played on a Japanese Vita will use X for accept, but on the Playstation Portable most games will use the system settings, rather than their own(there were exceptions, however).
• bluthru 12y ago
  What about crossing out dates or tasks? http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/88203236-calendar-with-dates-crossed-out-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=35VXefqbfky52bmcKHRgj0npKe9jkjCibt1WYq781dM%3D http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/88203236-calendar-with-date... Or crossing-out an item to "delete" it on the page?
• batiudrami 12y ago
  I always found it interesting that Sony swapped the X and O buttons for the western Playstation market. In Japan X (batsu) does mean "back" or "no", whereas elsewhere it is reversed.
  • gurkendoktor 12y ago
    Reminds me of how I use [x] to tick boxes in paper forms in Europe, but I was told in Asia (Taiwan) that I should use a check-mark instead. x is no.
    • _delirium 12y ago
      I think check-for-yes, x-for-no is a fairly common convention in English as well, just not in tick-box forms. You do see it in feature-comparisons grids a lot, often with the check-mark colored green and the x colored red, to mix in another convention. Example: http://prezi.com/pricing/ http://prezi.com/pricing/
  • xsace 12y ago
    I always though it was for the color. Blue for OK, red for No
• spacesword 12y ago
  They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
  • chewxy 12y ago
    Try playing some Japanese games on PS. It's the other way round in Japanese games
  • serf 12y ago
    not always. western games tend to be bound that way, but Japanese games, espescially RPGs , were not. example : final fantasy 7 control bindings. http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/buttons.php http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/buttons.php
    • Sektor 12y ago
      Interestingly the positioning of the two matches the common use of the nintendo buttons, A for confirm and B for cancel. The western Playstation games are really the exception to the rule.
  • teamonkey 12y ago
    In Japan they're sometimes switched. That is to say, I've worked on PS3 games where the US SKU had X=accept, O=back but the Japanese SKU had X=back, O=accept. [edited]
    • ekianjo 12y ago
      In Japan the actual convention is X=cancel/back and O=select/validate. Most japanese games follow that, because the Batsu/Maru meaning is obvious in Japanese with these symbols.
  • edmccard 12y ago
    On the PS1, Final Fantasy VII was O=yes, X=no, and so were a bunch of the less mainstream JRPGS; also, Metal Gear Solid games were O=yes, X=no at least into the PS2 era.
• sbw1 12y ago
  Interesting, but the connection to symbols from Japan seems a bit dubious (or at least not very recent). The term "cross out", and hence the use of an "x" to indicate negating something, seems to have been in common use in English since at least the 1920s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cross+out https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cross+out
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • nardi 12y ago
    I was going to say the same. Surely people have been crossing things out in writing and art for a very long time. Edit: According to etymonline.com, crossing things out dates to at lease mid 15th century: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Cross http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Cross
  • gnarbarian 12y ago
    A few counterpoints. "X marks the spot" Checking a box to indictate your selection on a form or ballot. I can't think of any more off the top of my head.
    • pjlegato 12y ago
      Checkmarks (positive, accepted item) are quite often opposed to X marks (negative, undesired item).
  • chippy 12y ago
    Where you put a tick, you can put a cross?
  • renlo 12y ago
    Also, it could have come from 'exit'. I've seen some text based programs use an 'x' key-press to activate a program 'exit', although I'm not sure of the chronology of its use.
  • mattlondon 12y ago
• mschuster91 12y ago
  Lots of banner ads make the close symbol e.g. the second from right (swap maximize and close) or swap the functions... thus exploiting muscle memory of people to open the ad :/
• kentosi 12y ago
  I recall being mildly shocked when Windows 95 came out with the the [x] button. I don't know why, but I thought that it was somewhat dangerous to allow users to quickly exit an application like this. Maybe it's because I was used to Windows 3.11, where you had to actually double-click the [-] button to exit an application.
  • mnw21cam 12y ago
    Agreed. But more to the point, I'd like to know what idiot decided it would be great to put a close button right next to the maximise and minimise buttons. It's a disaster just waiting for a mis-click. Since Win95, everyone else has copied this particular feature. First thing I do whenever I do a new Linux install is put the close button on its own on the left where it belongs.
    • atrilumen 12y ago
      On Linux I always eliminate window decoration. I don't even like to have borders, let alone buttons I never use. I really wish I could do the same on Mac.
      • mnw21cam 12y ago
        That's actually not such a bad idea. I have just a single pixel border around the left/right/bottom at the moment, just so I can see the edge of overlapping terminal windows. I have to say I wouldn't miss the titlebar much either.
    • anon4 12y ago
      If you notice, there's some space left between the maximise and close, so they're more like _[]...X Plus, you can maximise/restore by double-clicking the titlebar which is a larger target and I expect most users learn that and almost never touch the actual button.
  • asveikau 12y ago
    I still occasionally double click where the [-] used to be, which still works. Even longtime Windows users have given me weird looks at this. They are surprised it does something.
• lunchbox 12y ago
  It can also be thought of as a pun -- when you want to "exit" an application, you "X it".
  • baliex 12y ago
    I'd describe that as "verbing" it rather than "punning" it. The verb makes sense too, when you take keyboard short cuts into account. A very common short cut to exit a program (in Windows at least) is File->Exit, which translates to `Alt+F, X` so you do, in fact, "X it".
  • aerialfish 12y ago
    Wow, I've been saying "X it" for years but never even caught that it sounds like "exit".
  • Someone 12y ago
    No, you don't use a space: "xit name" (http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ex.html http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ex.html) If ex is not your favorite editor, use EX<ESC><ESC> (at least, that is what I think Wikipedia claims. I'm sure any decent TECO user never exits their editor, browsing the web in a browser macro) [I also checked ed and edlin. They had two commands for exiting: w writes and exits, q quits]
• bane 12y ago
  Wow great article. I don't agree with his conclusion that it came from Japan. But it's as good a reason as any I suppose. One quick thing, IIR Windows 2.0 and 3.0, the '-' button in the upper left wasn't "close". It was a small menu that happened to have close as an option.
  • Sharlin 12y ago
    You could double-click it to close, though. And of course the menu (and the double-click-to-close functionality) is still there, it's just that the [-] icon was replaced with the application's own icon. So contrary to the article, the close button was added in Win95, all the other elements are still there.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• brador 12y ago
  When we have completed a todo task we "cross it" to mark it done. i would say the x to close is intended to represent a "crossing out" not the letter x. It is pressed to signify a task has been completed.
  • klazutin 12y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Not being from exactly a Western culture (I'm Russian) I always saw the X not as a letter but rather as a cross (Russians say "click the cross to close the window"), a sign of deleting or cancelling something by crossing it out. It made perfect sense so I never even thought there could be other explanations. All because in our language there is no X-exit connection.
• lotsofmangos 12y ago
  RiscOS had the x as well in the late 1980s edit - Here's Arthur, the precursor to RiscOS in ~ 1986 - http://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2012/PaulFellows/1024/IMG_8131.jpg http://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2012/PaulFellows/10... - It has nice x icons.
  • LeoPanthera 12y ago
    Here's a cleaner shot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Risc_OS_311_Desktop.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Risc_OS_311_De... Until the NewLook sprite set, it looks more like a weird flower shape than an X. Here it is with NewLook: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/desktop/full/riscos37.png http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/desktop/full/riscos... Clearly now an X.
    • gpvos 12y ago
      That's RISC OS 3, which is several years later. Arthur already had the X in 1987, see for example http://mobile.osnews.com/story.php/18941/mobile-opt-out.php http://mobile.osnews.com/story.php/18941/mobile-opt-out.php . (Later than the 1985 find in Atari OS of the original article, but still interesting.) As far as I know, Acorn's RISC OS also pioneered the icon bar and the context menu.
      • LeoPanthera 12y ago
        I see that, but it's the same symbol as pre-NewLook RO3, and is only charitably described as an "X". It's more of a splat.
• literalusername 12y ago
  In this early demo (Codename: Chicago), the minimize and maximize buttons have been redesigned, but the close button remains the same, and to the left as before. I wonder where the author got the idea that the [-] button at the top-left was a close icon. It was the "Control Box", a menu icon. AFAIK it's still there, just invisible -- hit alt+space to open it. Disclaimer: I'm currently unable to test that.
  • bcoates 12y ago
    If you double-click it, it closes the application. It was converted from a picture of a spacebar to the application's icon, but still functions the same way.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • hamstergene 12y ago
      Some time ago I was stunned discovering how many Windows users had no idea that double-clicking [-] closes the window. I bet that was the main reason for introducing separate close button.
      • dysfunction 12y ago
        As someone who used Windows 3.1 for years and now uses Powershell on Windows 7 every day at work, I'm ashamed to admit I had no idea.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • hackuser 12y ago
    > It was the "Control Box", a menu icon. AFAIK it's still there, just invisible -- hit alt+space to open it. Still there in Windows 7. It's visible in some applications (e.g., PowerShell) but not others; ALT+SPACE seems to open it consistently whether it's visible or not. My hazy memory is that the control box was retained for accessibility and for the many users trained to use it on Windows 3.1.
• mjcohenw 12y ago
  I misinterpreted the title as "X Windows consortium to close."
  • marvy 12y ago
    me too
  • arethuza 12y ago
    I'm glad I'm not the only person to think that (mind you this was over breakfast and before much coffee). I did think very briefly that it was something to do with X, then thought X was a variable as in "$X to close".
• webkike 12y ago
  Perhaps it's not an icon, and was meant to indicate eXit. I know must use 'q' for quit, but I've seen a few programs that use 'x'
• BorisMelnik 12y ago
  Windows 95 was the first time I remember using it, and I have been using PC's since TRS model 80. It makes sense, X means "stop" in most cases and stop essentially means close or terminate a process / app.
  • kalleboo 12y ago
    > It makes sense, X means "stop" in most cases I'm trying to think of any cases where this is true. Stop signs aren't crosses, they have a special shape.
• iachimoe 12y ago
  As the article shows, the close button on MacOS classic was basically an empty box, but on mousing down on that box, it transformed into something that looks a bit like an x. I'm basing this on what I can see from using [1], but from my possibly inaccurate recollection of using the real thing in the 80s and 90s, some versions of MacOS had an even more "x like" mouse down image on the close button. [1] http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/
  • lstamour 12y ago
    Yeah, I was remembering this too. Of course, it also kind of felt like you'd "selected" the box. In fact, I think early checkboxes had x in them on Mac, didn't they? So it might have been a bit of a coincidence ... or an inspiration.
  • macrael 12y ago
    Yeah, weird. I remembered it being just an X but it had lines in all directions.
• msie 12y ago
  For me, the pinnacle of Windows UI design has always been Windows 95.
  • MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    The best windows UI imho was Win2000. Best UI overall would still be OSX, also imho.
• jzzskijj 12y ago
  Too bad, that popular Windows applications like Skype and Spotify have gone against this and made "X to minimize". And their making of Alt+F4 also to minimize drives me nuts.
  • insky 12y ago
    Not to mention web sites that use a graphical icon in the background instead of a textual one or lack a fallback X on pop up windows. I'm forever groping around trying to shut these overlays in the dark.
  • grimman 12y ago
    Far from exclusive to them though, and it seems to be (/have been?) a very common thing for IM clients to do. I can live with it as long as the devs put in the appropriate options for the behavior you want, but I'm not happy about it.
    • jzzskijj 12y ago
      I sort of understand the point for IM client, that people won't close it unintentionally. But that is solved by showing a dialog asking do you want to close. Breaking Alt+F4's functionality is such an abomination that it is impossible to understand the thought process behind the decision.
      • mehwoot 12y ago
        Huh? I thought the point for an IM client is that you don't need a window anywhere, if you have the icon down there. So you can close the main window, or you can separately quit the application.
        • jzzskijj 12y ago
          Well, in Skype (and Windows applications in general) there is a MINIMIZE button for that, next to X and maximize. Why make X also act as minimize?
• itazula 12y ago
  Wow, I had always thought the "X" was like an elevator close button. Sort of like a greater-than sign and a less-than sign put together: ><.
  • seszett 12y ago
    That's interesting... is the latin alphabet your native script?
    • itazula 12y ago
      Yes, English is my first language. I don't know why I internalized that symbol the way I did. And looking at the Atari TOS screenshot, I would have said the symbol in the upper right corner looked like an elevator "open" symbol, something like <>. But thinking more deeply, >< and <> are in only one dimension. They are good for expressing the idea of "close" and "open" respectively, but they fail to acknowledge the two-dimensional character of a window. So, I like what some of the other posters have said about four arrowheads pointing in and out respectively. That said, the symbol of two diagonal, outward-pointing arrows in the upper right corner of Mac OS X windows now strikes me as brilliant; in a minimal way, the idea of maximizing in two dimensions is expressed.
  • unwind 12y ago
    That's a really interesting idea, that had never occured to me. Probably because I'm pretty aware of the close-doors button actually looking like >|< on typical elevators. The vertical line, I guess, represents the opening. See for instance https://www.google.com/search?q=elevator+close+button&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=elevator+close+button&tbm=is....
    • rodh 12y ago
      Actually there are buttons with a line through them, and ones without. They maddeningly mean different things. See http://petesguide.com/symbols/elevator-button-symbols/ http://petesguide.com/symbols/elevator-button-symbols/
• kybernetikos 12y ago
  The Acorn Arthur operating system, a precursor to Risc OS used a sort of fat X icon to close windows in 1987 http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/arthur2.gif http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/arthur2.gif
  • aembleton 12y ago
    I never used Acorn Arthur but I did use RiscOS 3 whilst at primary school circa '91, and this had an X in the corner: http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/riscos-02.gif http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/riscos-02.gif I'm sure the GUI design of RiscOS 3 helped to inspire Windows 95.
    • ianetaylor 12y ago
      I don't remember where the [X] came from specifically but there were a bunch of Brits on the Windows team at the time (myself included) and we had a number of Archimedes machines around. A lot of Lemmings was played. I remember there was nearly endless debate about where the [X] should go so people wouldn't accidentally. I think the desire to make it visually distinct was a big factor.
      • kybernetikos 12y ago
        Interesting. That surprises me - I'd always assumed that the UK scene didn't have much influence on the US technology world.
        • ianetaylor 12y ago
          At the time Microsoft's Languages Division was run by a Welsh guy (David Jones) and he liked to hire fellow Brits.
      • ianetaylor 12y ago
        *so people wouldn't accidentally click it
• markmontymark 12y ago
  "Vi, vim, emacs or edlin? No [x] to close these 1980's text editors either. X was commonly used to delete characters in-line, but not to close the program." Hmm... I've used :x to write+quit in Vim for years. And, :X is to encrypt+quit. Don't have a year when that was added though. Could be fun to try and dig that up.
  • DanBC 12y ago
    Not sure why you got downvoted so much. It would be fascinating if there was a text mode [x] somewhere, especially if it was in common software. EDIT: It's not in Norton Commander.
  • oftenwrong 12y ago
    >Hmm... I've used :x to write+quit in Vim for years. And, :X is to encrypt+quit. Don't have a year when that was added though. Could be fun to try and dig that up. :x (short for :xit) was in the original ex written by Bill Joy in 1976. According to Joy[1], ex pulled together ideas from a few different places: 1. em from QMC, written by George Coulouris[2] 2. a modified version of ed from UCLA 3. An early version of ex written by Charles Haley based on the em source in 1976 4. Bill Joy himself em uses 'x' for its interactive find-and-replace mode ("exchange"), so it didn't originate there. That leaves 2, 3, and 4 as possible origins. I can't find anything on the UCLA ed. If the origins are in 3 or 4, :x is from 1976. [1] http://roguelife.org/~fujita/COOKIES/HISTORY/1BSD/exrefm.pdf http://roguelife.org/~fujita/COOKIES/HISTORY/1BSD/exrefm.pdf [2] http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~gc/history/ http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~gc/history/
• minusSeven 12y ago
  Mind telling us why this is so important !
  • fit2rule 12y ago
    Because it is a design artifact that has survived decades, and here on HN there are a significant number of people who are designing artifacts that they hope will survive decades. Context is everything - for those people, this article provides a little context. Yesterday's "X" to close is today's 'swipe to close', and tomorrow's [___?___]. Solve for [___?___].
  • lttlrck 12y ago
    Does it have to be important to be interesting?
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• mambodog 12y ago
  If you want to see the UI of GEM for yourself, here's an in browser emulator of an Atari ST with GEM: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/atari-st/ http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/atari-st/
• pjmlp 12y ago
  Windows versions prior to Windows 95 lacked an "X" button, but double clicking on the left menu icon would close the window. A behavior still present in modern versions.
• samdb 12y ago
  Someone in our office insists on calling closing a window 'crossing it off'.
• crystaln 12y ago
  If I recall, clicking on the X on old Macs added an X inside the square, so I think there's a step missing from this article.
  • scelerat 12y ago
    It wasn't really an X, more "stretch marks" to visually indicate the mouse-down event.
    • crystaln 12y ago
      Odd they didn't use such stretch marks anywhere else.... except perhaps check boxes.
• kentaromiura 12y ago
  IIRC on windows 3.1 keyboard navigation X was always the key for exiting, as E was already used for other things. I clearly remember that for closing windows one could do alt+f4 (which was itself a shortcut to Close) or open the file menu (Alt+F) and select eXit. I can't check but I believe it was the same for Write and notepad as well and any other programs that had the Exit option. So maybe that's where the windows 95 developer took inspiration for the X icon
• EGreg 12y ago
  I think I remember that hitting the "close" button on early, black-and-white macs would make a star appear in the square, signifying the press. Almost like the X...
• lwh 12y ago
  The delete/rubout key on many old terminals had an X on it. Like this: http://www.cosam.org/images/vt220/keyboard.jpg http://www.cosam.org/images/vt220/keyboard.jpg
  • boobsbr 12y ago
    The backspace key on my Lenovo keyboard is identical. And if I remember correctly, it was the same key on an electrical typewriter I used in the 90s.
    • DanBC 12y ago
      On typewriters you would backspace and then overtype an X. Those keyboards tend to just use the word "backspace" or a back arrow symbol. So typewriters use this symbol when they automate the overstrike or they moved to correction tape.
  • TeMPOraL 12y ago
    So that's where they took that Backspace icon on smartphone keyboards from...
• baq 12y ago
  OS/2 gets pretty close with a [ / ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#mediaviewer/File:Os2W4.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#mediaviewer/File:Os2W4.png
  • wolfgke 12y ago
    This is a screenshot from OS/2 Warp 4, which was released after Windows 95 (source: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?page_id=132 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?page_id=132). OS/2 Warp 3 that came before Windows 95 had the following set of Window buttons: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/os2warp3 http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/os2warp3
  • killercup 12y ago
    Looks like `[x]/2 == [/]`.
• pwg 12y ago
  Another old example. WordStar: Used "X" to Exit to system in its main menu (https://www.flickr.com/photos/markgregory/6946218793/?rb=1 https://www.flickr.com/photos/markgregory/6946218793/?rb=1) - I do not know the revision shown in the screen shot. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar) WordStar was released in 1978. Which moves the date back to at least 1978 to use X for exit. However, there is possibly a very simple explanation that the blog posting overlooked. In text menu's, such as WordStar's, which were quite common for a lot of software from that era, using the word "Exit" to mean "leave this program/application" was also common. When one goes looking for a single character memonic for "Exit" to build in as a keystroke to activate the "Exit" command from the menu, one has four choices: [e] [x] [i] [t] Since [x] is an uncommon letter, while e, i, t, are more common, and therefore more likely to be used for triggering other commands in the menu(s), choosing [x] to mean exit meant that the same character could likely be used as a universal "leave this menu" command key across all the menus. Which would then lead to the common _F_ile->E_x_it command accelerators in drop down style menus (whether in a GUI or in a text menuing system). [x] was unlikely to have been used for the keyboard accelerator for other entries in the "file" menu, so picking e[x]it was a safe choice. It is not a far reach from _F_ile->E_x_it using [x] as its accelerator key to labeling the title bar button that performs the same function with an X as well, to take advantage of whatever familiarity users might have with the drop down menu accelerators
  • hammock 12y ago
    Not to mention the letter X sounds like the word "exit," or "ex it." In this way using X as a keyboard command to represent exit might be distinct from the way OP posits X to represent batsu (false, bad, wrong or attack).
    • hyp0 12y ago
      though X already means false or bad in western culture, the opposite of a tick (✓). there's also "ex-partner" (my ex) etc. in a gui, it's an ex-window.
    • Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
• enesunal 12y ago
  Well what you know about `windows` in GUI? What is the first appearence of the `windows` based-GUI?
• rangibaby 12y ago
  I had a non-technical friend who insisted it was an x because you used it to "x it"
• edpichler 12y ago
  I'm not icon designer, but I just finished the hackdesign.org course (I recommend it) and now I understand a little bit of it and now I always try to think as one. The [X] icon in graphic windows software (not in WordStar, Vim, etc), and not thinking as a letter of the alphabet (remember that maximize and minimize don't are also) but just as picture, it remembers me something collapsing. Like something bigger in a normal state with the borders collapsing to a center till disappear. As when you turn off and old CRT television (or an Android powered cell phone).
  • edpichler 12y ago
    I'm still thinking on this... in design you don't think in one part alone, all the context is important. The minimize represents the future state of the window in the bottom bar, and the maximize represents the window occupying all the available area. I conclude these three icons are really good and well designed.
• boobsbr 12y ago
  What about using CTRL-X to exit DOS programs?
• autokad 12y ago
  This is a great story, and I enjoyed the look back at all the different OS. sadly if it happened today the x to close would have been patented.
• panzi 12y ago
  It's not X, it's ❌. (90° angle of the two lines) I always hate it when someone actually uses an X. Looks ugly.
• quux 12y ago
  NeXT had X buttons to close windows before windows 95, with a very similar look to to win 95 window button styles too. I think NeXTStep 1.0 was in 1989 or thereabouts.
• Dewie 12y ago
  Mouse-wheel to scroll (to intro).
• jimmaswell 12y ago
  I'd always thought of it like the "crossing out" kind of gesture such as drawing an X over something on paper.
• pjlegato 12y ago
  The use of the X symbol to mean "cancel, close" isn't nearly so mysterious as the author claims. "Cross off" and "cross out" are common phrases in English, and traditionally denoted by an X symbol (the "cross"). There is no reason to suppose that the GUI usage was inspired in any way by exotic Japan. The X as "cancel symbol" has been quite common in the west and indeed worldwide for millenia.
• kabdib 12y ago
  I worked at Atari, on the Atari ST (writing a bunch of systems-level code). My cow-orkers were working closely with DRI to port GEM to the ST hardware. GEM wasn't done yet, and much of the engineering effort there was helping DRI finish it up. A lot of stuff was done on the Atari side of the fence that never made it back to the DRI sources. I can categorically state that there wasn't any Japanese influence on that "X". If anything, it was programmer art. We Atari folks were mostly video-game programmers, with some sense of design, and a lot of the stuff that was coming out of DRI was pretty ugly. So it probably got tweaked late a night until it "looked pretty" and wasn't revisited (the ST was started and shipped in about 10 months, so we were in kind of a hurry).
• riveteye 12y ago
  UPDATED: So this little article has travelled pretty far! There were a lot of good tips, comments and insights into the origin of [x] but none as good as this email that I received from Windows 95 team member Daniel Oran. “Hi Lauren, A friend forwarded me your Medium piece, “X to Close.” He remembered that I had worked on Windows 95 at Microsoft — I created the Start Button and Taskbar — and thought I’d be amused. I was! :-) It’s fun to see how history gets written when you actually lived those long-ago events. I joined Microsoft in 1992 as a program manager for the user interface of “Chicago,” which was the code name for what eventually became Windows 95.  So, who was responsible for this last minute change? As far as I can tell, this person is responsible for the proliferation and widespread use of [x] in UI design today. It wasn’t a last-minute change. During 1993, we considered many variations of the close-button design. And the source wasn’t Atari. It was NeXT, which had an X close button in the upper right, along with the grayscale faux-3D look that we borrowed for Windows 95. I wanted to put the Windows X close button in the upper left, but that conflicted with the existing Windows Alt-spacebar menu and also a new program icon, which we borrowed fromOS/2, on which Microsoft had originally partnered with IBM. Attached is the earliest Chicago bitmap I could find that includes an X close button. It’s dated 9/22/1993. (In attaching the file to this email, I just realized that it’s so old that it has only an eight-character name. Before Windows 95, that was the limit.) Thanks for your very entertaining essay! Best, Danny” I guess you could say case [x]ed. Thanks again to everyone who helped track down earlier examples of GUIs and early text editors that used [x] to close as well. Fascinating!
• jadepraerie 12y ago
  I love the nostalgia of seeing screenshots from older operating systems. Thank you!