Animated cursors in OSX

[Georg Tuparev]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 3:19 PM, Georg Seifert wrote:

> There are some Programms using custom animated cursors. I remember  
> Photoshop (a watch with turning arms) and Fetch (the running dog).

As far as I remember, this is not encouraged by the HIG...

gt


>
>
> Georg
>
>
> Am 21.06.2008 um 04:44 schrieb Scott Stevenson:
>
>>
>> On Jun 20, 2008, at 9:22 AM, Hans Larsen wrote:
>>
>>> The client asked us to implement their animated custom cursors in  
>>> the application (I already implemented static ones). I didn't find  
>>> any documentation online and a few on QuickDraw that are  
>>> deprecated since 10.4. Since I've never used QuickDraw and all of  
>>> this is deprecated, I'd prefer to stay away from this kind of  
>>> solution (which seems messy at best TBH).
>>>
>>> Is there a way to implement animated cursors easily using AppKit  
>>> (or any other framework) or am I stuck to either static ones or  
>>> NSTimer hacks?
>>
>> This might be obvious, but there is only one animated cursor in Mac  
>> OS X, which is the spinning wait cursor. And it's used only as a  
>> last ditch indicator when the app has stopped accepting input. In  
>> general, animated cursors do not fit with the design of the Mac OS  
>> X user experience because the're considering distracting rather  
>> than informative.
>>
>> If you can, you might want to suggest to your client that a Mac  
>> version of product would be better received without animated  
>> cursors. In addition, activity should always be indicated in the  
>> relevant window, not at the cursor level. So for example, the  
>> combined pointer/spinner cursors that are sometimes seen in other  
>> UIs shouldn't be used in a Mac app -- with the possible exception  
>> of immersive game environments.
>>
>>    - Scott
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>
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Georg Tuparev
Tuparev Technologies
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