|
How to Change the Mouse Pointer
By Stephen Bucaro
Internet Explorer provides a selection of standard mouse pointers. Which
standard pointer is being displayed depends upon the location and context of the
mouse. Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) rules, it's easy to change the mouse pointer.
One possible reason to change the mouse pointer is to indicate that a link
provides help information, as shown below.
Help
<a style="cursor:help;" href="#">Help</a>
Using an image's onclick event you can program an image to open a
popup window when clicked. The problem with this method is that it doesn't
change the pointer to indicate that the image is clickable when you move the
mouse over the image. The image below uses the onclick event with the Java
Script window.open function to open a popup window.

Note that the mouse pointer did not change to indicate that the image was
clickable. The image below uses the same method to open a popup window, but this
time a cursor style is applied to the image tag.
Below is a list of the standard pointers. Move your mouse pointer over each
box to display the pointer.
crosshair
pointer
move
text
wait
help
n-resize
ne-resize
e-resize
se-resize
s-resize
sw-resize
w-resize
nw-resize
Although it's easy to change the mouse pointer, this
feature should be used sparingly. Users are accustomed to using the mouse
pointer shape as an indicator as to the context of their actions. Changing the
mouse pointer from the expected shape may confuse and frustrate users. For
example, displaying the hour glass (cursor:wait) when no activity is occuring
might be really annoying.
|