I noticed that if you slowly hover your cursor over the letters in ms-word, it creates a rainbow like colors at the intersecting point between cursor and the letter. It works best on letters with diagonal lines like ‘W’ or ‘V’. Why does this happen?
In: Technology
The adult answer is [subpixel rendering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering).
The ELI5 version is: Your monitor isn’t really a grid of small dots that can display any color. It’s actually a grid of even smaller alternating red, green, and blue dots that combine to form all the colors because your eyes can’t tell them apart. Usually the computer just pretends that the nearby red, green, and blue dots are all in exactly the same location on the screen. But for letters, sometimes the computer purposely uses the spatial layout of the red, green, and blue dots to make things even smoother, since the subpixel dots are so small. It usually works well and can be designed especially so your eyes perceive the extra smoothness but barely notice the colorful edges. But if the computer then draws another very thin thing (like a text cursor) on top of those kinds of letters, it can ruin the illusion and make the colors obvious. That’s what’s happening to you.
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