cursor: hand

Microsoft called the pointing hand cursor: hand, and half the web copied it before reading the spec.

In 2026: Dead. hand was never in any CSS specification, so every modern browser drops the declaration as invalid and the cursor stays an arrow. Pages that wrote both, hand first and pointer second, still work by accident, which is the only reason anyone got away with it for so long.

Where it came from: Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 CSS extensions, 1997. CSS2 chose pointer the following year, and IE quietly accepted both. MDN ↗

<style>
.hand    { cursor: hand; }     /* IE only, never standard */
.pointer { cursor: pointer; }  /* the CSS2 spelling */
</style>

<p class="hand">Hover me. cursor: hand. Nothing happens in 2026.</p>
<p class="pointer">Hover me. cursor: pointer. The hand you expected.</p>