I missed the tiny "x" on a browser tab again today. Meant to close it, switched to it instead. Aiming a one-pixel pointer at an eleven-pixel checkbox is basically microsurgery, and somewhere along the way we all just accepted that.
Here's the strange part: HCI research solved this twenty years ago. It just never shipped.
The paper
In 2005, Grossman and Balakrishnan published The Bubble Cursor at CHI. The whole idea fits in one sentence:
Make the cursor's hit area a dynamic circle that always contains exactly one target.
