Every mouse pointer does one thing almost all the time: nothing. It sits on whatever is beneath it, not clicking, just resting there. That resting position is hover, and for thirty years the web quietly built itself on top of it. Menus, tooltips, previews, the little labels that appear when you leave the pointer somewhere. None of them need a click. All of them need a pointer that can wait over a thing without committing to it. This is the story of what happened to the hover state over the years.
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The Hover State: Between Noticing and Doing
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Interface Studies
