CADlab Digitizing Tablet Model 2210

Bill Buxton's Notes

When screens were small and expensive, screen real estate was too valuable to waste on UI elements, especially if they were used all the time. Hence, the practice was often to sacrifice some of the tablet surface, and allocate it as an extension of the display—in this case, for menus. The display, of course, is not dynamic, but the menu items were more-or-less persistently needed. Hence, only a quarter of the tablet was actually used for cursor control. The rest for UI.