It's interesting that in the context of a pirate map, X, marks the spot of the treasure to be found while in another context, X, means close the window or "incorrect." I wonder which one will be most accurate for Twitter's new branding?
The left-hand title bar button in Windows 3.x was not a close button, mind, it opened the title bar dropdown menu (which was changed to a right-click context menu in Windows 95).
> When I see an "X" in the corner of an image I see on screen, it feels as though clicking on it will make it go away. Now, clicking on an "X" is supposed to feel like a way to take me onto The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. But my instinct is to click when something is annoying me, not to click when I want more.
>Batsu (x) is the symbol for incorrect, and can represent false, bad, wrong or attack, while maru (o) means correct, true, good, whole, or something precious. Another familiar example of batsu/maru is in the Playstation controller design, where maru and batsu are used for yes and no.
Interestingly, ╳ is no/◯ is yes only on Playstation games released in Japan. For games released everywhere else in the world, it's reversed (which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"). Previous HN discussion speculating on reasons for the switch here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171430
The empty circle is a common Western symbol for “off”, as in power switches.
It associates with zero == false == no. I suspect this is why Sony swapped the meanings.
The meaning of an X symbol isn’t universal even in Europe, but it’s often used to mark a point of interest or active selection (as in ticking boxes, or “X marks the spot”).
What do you mean reversed? The NES already assigned letters right-to-left: B A!
Controllers typically used sets of A-B(-C) X-Y(-Z) face buttons, A/B intuitively meaning ok/back however they were laid out, usually in straight or angled rows assigned left-to-right (e.g. Sega) or right-to-left (e.g. Nintendo). The angled layouts are the modern Xbox and Nintendo layouts (which Nintendo used since forever and Xbox I guess inherited from their Windows CE involvement with Sega).
But Sony came up with the symbols instead, so Japanese devs followed the maru/batsu metaphor with circle/X, whereas early western games used X/triangle until they switched to X/circle, and those became official regional layouts until the PS5 switched Japan to X/circle.
I'm fine with different controllers displaying different symbols for the same button, but random-button QTEs and games based around entirely contextual prompts are the bottom of the barrel of gaming. I've seen so many people fail at games by Quantic Dream and Supermassive simply because they were playing with an unfamilar controller.
The labels exist to help the game teach its control scheme, not to make players memorise the layout itself. But of course, games without consistent game mechanics don't have any control scheme to teach.
The Switch didn't change the meaning of A and B; the OS and all first-party Nintendo games that I've seen use A=confirm and B=cancel, which has been the case for a long time.
There are some games I've played on the Switch that use B=confirm, I think usually so that button layout is the same across consoles.
based only on my memory, when computers started to get small enough to have power switches that I had access to, the power toggle switches were marked with 0 and 1, and no other appliances had that, so it was basically engineers of digital devices marking things with some combination of obvious logic and humor.
the on-off-merged-in-one-pushbutton 0 with a 1 at 12 oclock (in the circle of the 0) came later, I assume out of Europe (Asia?), because suddenly all at once everything had them, mid 90s I think. That was also the beginning of globalization (meaning, identical products sold everywhere) and also "on/off are advisories, not switches", which was probably all just coincidental timing.
(I don't think the 0/1 toggle computer power switch labelling somehow had more influence over Europeans or Asians than it did over Americans, but I dunno, engineers are pretty universal)
I was really struggling to figure out what symbol you were talking about and I couldn't come up with anything. Looked it up and __you mean the power_ icon! I never considered it was made up of the 1 and 0 used for on/off states.
Your memory is serving you very ill. These various symbols were standardized in 1973. The one that you are searching for a name for is the standby symbol. Standby buttons do not actually power computers off. (Circuitry that handles waking up from standby is, of course, still powered on.)
For me, I noticed the 'X' on the Playstation controllers is located right where my right hand thumb naturally wants to come to rest when holding the controller. And, when starting a game and selecting 'Yes' many times in a row to get going (as usually happens at some point when going thru options and menus and setup, etc), it feels natural to just go straight for that button, the X, rather than the O, to me; the O button being just a slight up-and-to-the-right movement from where my thumb is naturally sitting.
Now, I never played a lot of Playstation. But maybe my short amount of time playing had already contrived muscle memory for my thumb to hover over 'X' instead of 'O', and I'm swapping the cause of the natural feel.
It would be interesting then, if Japanese games all use the 'O' as the yes/confirm/next style button in games, do Japanese gamers have a 'naturally' different thumb resting-hover position when picking up a Playstation controller?
If not, I'm surprised Sony did not have the X and O reversed on the earliest design of the controller.
> the O button being just a slight up-and-to-the-right movement from where my thumb is naturally sitting.
It reminds me of the Yes/No vs. No/Yes debate in the OS UI world. In windows we get Yes on the left and No on the right, which exactly the same as with the PS controller.
In Linux this is often reversed and only when you make the change you notice how much you get used to it being one way or the other.
I wonder what the order is in Japanese Windows and if it affects Japanese PS controller users at all.
I've never given much thought to this, but I use Windows at work and Linux at home and haven't clocked the difference. At work I mapped the up-and-right thumb button on my mouse to "Enter" and the down-and-left button to "Esc", which I find very convenient specifically for CAD. I got my mouse replaced when the left click button went bad and took the old mouse home and replaced the switch. I set up the same mapping, and I haven't noticed any dissonance.
The biggest confusion I notice is scroll-to-zoom, where you have a 50% chance of using up to zoom in down to zoom out and 50% of the other way. I haven't found a good way to guess which applications will do which (on my CAD workstation I have one of two programs set to inverted scroll, and I won't remember which one it is unless I run into a new installation).
I've noticed that nintendo games tend to use rightmost button as yes/accept and bottom button as no/cancel, just like the Japanese Playstation layout.
If I switch between Nintendo and US-Playstation there's usually a short adjustment period where I need to learn to put my right thumb back into the correct "home" position. Both feel comfortable and adjusting to the new normal is pretty fast.
It's doubly annoying to switch back and forth between using an Xbox controller, where a-b and x-y are reversed as well. Good luck on those quick time events. Compliments to the switch where they simply used a diamond pattern with the necessary button highlighted.
Almost 30 years of PlayStation use and I still hesitate with square and circle. I have to specifically think about which is which. I have no problems with my left or right for example but I imagine this is what it would feel like.
Also Xbox is quite unpopular in Japan, so Sony might think that unnatural O/X swap is still fine. It seems to proven true for vs Xbox, but PS5 isn't much beloved.
And maybe also consistency with the system UI, since the system UI on the PS2 (and maybe PS1, not sure) used circle for back, while PS1 and PS2 games used triangle. On the PS3 you would use the system UI a lot more, so maybe games switched to match.
Some old PlayStation 1 games kept the O yes and X no configuration even in the US. final fantasy 7 sticks out especially as a game that kept this control scheme.
I want to remember that Metal Gear Solid also kept the Japanese configuration (in the European version), but I'm not sure how reliable my memories are of the late 90s
The "original/intended" layout was used a little bit on some Western releases in the early days: Final Fantasy 7 memorably has X as cancel and O as confirm, for example.
As others have pointed out, the "flipped" version eventually dominated to the extent that they changed it even in Japan, though maybe you can blame Sony's increasingly Western focus there.
Switching it for the West never really made any sense and has only ever led to more confusion than if they hadn't done it at all.
I actually found this pretty confusing myself as the first PlayStation console I had was a PS3 that I bought in Hong Kong that had the Japanese button layout. Some time later, I was using this primarily with Linux under OtherOS and I bought a UK PS3 to play games with. It took me a long time to get used to the swapped buttons.
Interestingly, I later became a games developer and discovered that on the developer units you can change the O/X to confirm/cancel mapping in order to be able to test for correct behaviour in both locales, but as a frustrated player who was still getting them mixed up, I never understood why that option wasn't just available on the retail consoles as well.
> which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"
As for this, I think in the UK and maybe most of the English speaking world (and maybe also most other countries), people are conditioned to using an x to mark their selection when confronted with several choices, or a tick mark for true if there's only one choice (sometimes people tick checkboxes, but this usually extends past the edge of the box and can easily get messy) but is seems culturally in Japan they've always used the circle instead.
Similarly, using O for off has been a convention on power switches for a long time (again, at least in the UK), so it also makes sense as a cancel button.
Conversely, there's also use good precedent for X to indicate wrong in the UK, but I think it's only really when there's a choice between cross and tick.
I guess for the original PlayStation, it was always intended that O was confirm and X was cancel, and only got changed for non-Asia when the international Sony offices complained about it being culturally confusing.
I'm thinking it has to do with how we use X to fill in choices in a form. And btw. that's a common mistake to make in Japan - never fill in forms with X there, use maru instead.
> 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.
Not quite true. In Vim, :x means ‘save and close buffer’, and is a synonym for :wq. (Not sure if this was present in earlier Vi or not, but I believe it was.)
Interestingly, ArthurOS (what would eventually be renamed to RISC OS) version 1.2 from 1987 already used an [x] to close (https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/riscos12) thus predating NeXTSTEP.
Apropos this sort of thing: Around that time, one of the employees of Acornsoft took the RISC OS "icon bar" concept with him to Microsoft, where it became the "task bar" in Windows 95. Source: ex-Acornsoft employee whom I talk to at meetups from time to time. I have mentioned to him that the icon bar launched many careers, not just programs :-)
NeXTSTEP ended up being the visual foundation and the actual foundation of the two major operating systems that it had sought to supplant in the first place.
The pressed state for the close box was a sort of starburst thing, not an X. (Possibly you’re thinking of checkboxes, which were squares that got crossed out when they were checked.)
One of my favorite fumbles from Google's AMP project. For a while, if you navigated to an AMP site from the carousel...The [X] on the AMP-injected header would send them back to Google, rather than dismiss the header.
Well the song “straight edge” by Minor Threat and the subsequent movement happened in 1981 and they used the X to indicate they abstained from drink/drugs (closing them down as it were). Perhaps that is where it came from??
Back in the early 2000s, I had a Windows 3.1 386 machine to myself as my family was using the new PC at the time. The glaring difference to me was the missing "X" so I programmed a small window that would dock on the corner of the active window and provide an X close button (as well as maximize, minimize as the real ones were now obscured by that window). It was very hacky-spaghetti Visual Basic code using whatever I can figure out from WinAPI documentations I could find and I was too inexperienced back then. But it worked. My older brother didn't realize the "X" wasn't supposed to exist and it even ended up getting bundled with someone's Calmira fork. Good times.
This headline is deceptive: it starts with "X to Close". When I first read this, I thought this means that X (formerly Twitter) was closing. Then my urge to cheer loudly was suddenly quashed when I read the rest of the headline.
85 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] thread> When I see an "X" in the corner of an image I see on screen, it feels as though clicking on it will make it go away. Now, clicking on an "X" is supposed to feel like a way to take me onto The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. But my instinct is to click when something is annoying me, not to click when I want more.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-problem-with-x.html
Interestingly, ╳ is no/◯ is yes only on Playstation games released in Japan. For games released everywhere else in the world, it's reversed (which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"). Previous HN discussion speculating on reasons for the switch here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171430
It associates with zero == false == no. I suspect this is why Sony swapped the meanings.
The meaning of an X symbol isn’t universal even in Europe, but it’s often used to mark a point of interest or active selection (as in ticking boxes, or “X marks the spot”).
I hate that the switch does this.
But it means sense if everyone in Japan is used to that behaviour because of the swapping of X and O on Playstation.
Controllers typically used sets of A-B(-C) X-Y(-Z) face buttons, A/B intuitively meaning ok/back however they were laid out, usually in straight or angled rows assigned left-to-right (e.g. Sega) or right-to-left (e.g. Nintendo). The angled layouts are the modern Xbox and Nintendo layouts (which Nintendo used since forever and Xbox I guess inherited from their Windows CE involvement with Sega).
But Sony came up with the symbols instead, so Japanese devs followed the maru/batsu metaphor with circle/X, whereas early western games used X/triangle until they switched to X/circle, and those became official regional layouts until the PS5 switched Japan to X/circle.
The labels exist to help the game teach its control scheme, not to make players memorise the layout itself. But of course, games without consistent game mechanics don't have any control scheme to teach.
There are some games I've played on the Switch that use B=confirm, I think usually so that button layout is the same across consoles.
Was that the case when the PlayStation initially released?
the on-off-merged-in-one-pushbutton 0 with a 1 at 12 oclock (in the circle of the 0) came later, I assume out of Europe (Asia?), because suddenly all at once everything had them, mid 90s I think. That was also the beginning of globalization (meaning, identical products sold everywhere) and also "on/off are advisories, not switches", which was probably all just coincidental timing.
(I don't think the 0/1 toggle computer power switch labelling somehow had more influence over Europeans or Asians than it did over Americans, but I dunno, engineers are pretty universal)
I was really struggling to figure out what symbol you were talking about and I couldn't come up with anything. Looked it up and __you mean the power_ icon! I never considered it was made up of the 1 and 0 used for on/off states.
https://www.iso.org/obp/ui#iec:grs:60417:5009
X is commonly used for crossing things out, and marking things wrong
Now, I never played a lot of Playstation. But maybe my short amount of time playing had already contrived muscle memory for my thumb to hover over 'X' instead of 'O', and I'm swapping the cause of the natural feel.
It would be interesting then, if Japanese games all use the 'O' as the yes/confirm/next style button in games, do Japanese gamers have a 'naturally' different thumb resting-hover position when picking up a Playstation controller?
If not, I'm surprised Sony did not have the X and O reversed on the earliest design of the controller.
It reminds me of the Yes/No vs. No/Yes debate in the OS UI world. In windows we get Yes on the left and No on the right, which exactly the same as with the PS controller.
In Linux this is often reversed and only when you make the change you notice how much you get used to it being one way or the other.
I wonder what the order is in Japanese Windows and if it affects Japanese PS controller users at all.
The biggest confusion I notice is scroll-to-zoom, where you have a 50% chance of using up to zoom in down to zoom out and 50% of the other way. I haven't found a good way to guess which applications will do which (on my CAD workstation I have one of two programs set to inverted scroll, and I won't remember which one it is unless I run into a new installation).
If I switch between Nintendo and US-Playstation there's usually a short adjustment period where I need to learn to put my right thumb back into the correct "home" position. Both feel comfortable and adjusting to the new normal is pretty fast.
Not anymore as of PS5 though, not sure why they chose to change it.
It's probably just due to consistency with the Xbox.
As others have pointed out, the "flipped" version eventually dominated to the extent that they changed it even in Japan, though maybe you can blame Sony's increasingly Western focus there.
Switching it for the West never really made any sense and has only ever led to more confusion than if they hadn't done it at all.
The reactions from Japanese gamers were quite humorous.
“At last they’re making it uniform? Japan has been defeated.”
“Yep, trash.”
“Sony traitors.”
“This is a bullshit console.”
“This means that the circle on the Japanese flag is now ‘cancel.’”
https://kotaku.com/sony-is-changing-the-confirm-and-cancel-b...
Interestingly, I later became a games developer and discovered that on the developer units you can change the O/X to confirm/cancel mapping in order to be able to test for correct behaviour in both locales, but as a frustrated player who was still getting them mixed up, I never understood why that option wasn't just available on the retail consoles as well.
> which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"
As for this, I think in the UK and maybe most of the English speaking world (and maybe also most other countries), people are conditioned to using an x to mark their selection when confronted with several choices, or a tick mark for true if there's only one choice (sometimes people tick checkboxes, but this usually extends past the edge of the box and can easily get messy) but is seems culturally in Japan they've always used the circle instead.
Similarly, using O for off has been a convention on power switches for a long time (again, at least in the UK), so it also makes sense as a cancel button.
Conversely, there's also use good precedent for X to indicate wrong in the UK, but I think it's only really when there's a choice between cross and tick.
I guess for the original PlayStation, it was always intended that O was confirm and X was cancel, and only got changed for non-Asia when the international Sony offices complained about it being culturally confusing.
Not quite true. In Vim, :x means ‘save and close buffer’, and is a synonym for :wq. (Not sure if this was present in earlier Vi or not, but I believe it was.)
It sounds wild that the X == denial originates from Japan.
Before that I assume “x” was a metaphor for crossing out the page of text or paragraph marking it invalid. That is probably not as universal.
Windows 3 was using “x” in checkboxes as well, I wonder if switching to checkmarks is connected to putting “x” on the “close window” button.
The File menu has Close.
The “x” during hover was apparently added in MacOS X.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171340
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171375
My personal conjecture is that the Close action had the purpose to kill off your graphical work at that point.
So death for that portion…
Death often being depicted in cartoons (inc. black and white) with an X over both eyelids
Which? The website linked to is hardly comprehensive [1]. There's literally tonnes of X window managers pre-1993 [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160516213015/http://whiteandno...
[2] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guide_to_X11/Window_Managers