Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal • Hacker News Board

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#21

Post by aidanbeck » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

The most intriguing case for hijacking is in Neal's "cursor camp" game linked by the author. In my own designing of applications, navigating a 2d space exceeding the boundaries of a window has a whole host of design problems. Clicking and dragging to offset your perspective is the best solution, but it is less intuitive and eliminates otherwise accessible click interactions.

Letting the view follow the pointer (therefore moving it relative to the device screen) would be remarkable for this genre of UI.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#22

Post by Grom_PE » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #4

Software moving the mouse cursor is only acceptable when the window is full-screen. If the user makes an application go full-screen, they are opting out of the normal desktop UI conventions. It's expected that full-screen software completely takes over the UI, and there are legitimate uses for moving the mouse cursor in full-screen software, e.g. centering an invisible cursor every frame in a first-person shooter gam…

I generally never want programs to go fullscreen because I like to keep taskbar shown, so I can keep track of time, notifications and whatnot.

Well designed video games that rely on fast and precise mouse input capture the cursor during the gameplay until menu is shown.

The only times I have to go fullscreen is for the games that fail to capture the cursor and where accidentally clicking outside of the game window leads to a loss.

Can't imagine a non-game program other than a video player that I would want fullscreen.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#23

Post by Ukv » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #4

Software moving the mouse cursor is only acceptable when the window is full-screen. If the user makes an application go full-screen, they are opting out of the normal desktop UI conventions. It's expected that full-screen software completely takes over the UI, and there are legitimate uses for moving the mouse cursor in full-screen software, e.g. centering an invisible cursor every frame in a first-person shooter gam…

> But if it's windowed then it should be impossible.

I have one monitor, so fairly often have games/editors windowed with something else alongside them (a video, documentation, …). There are also uses where the mouse is only captured temporarily - like FPS-controls flying mode in Godot and Blender. Some image editors also allow for things like moving the cursor with arrow keys, which I find useful.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#24

Post by mock-possum » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

> in the earlier days of Figma, when I prototyped an interaction where you could select someone else’s pointer and press Backspace to delete it:

Aw that looks fun!

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#25

Post by trklausss » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

> But to me the challenge is that it’s hard to imagine everything that needs to be preemptively captured and prohibited. I have to imagine this stuff for living, and I literally did not think anyone would just move a mouse pointer like this.

In requirements engineering, you do only codify things in the positive sense. The reason behind is that the system shall only do things that are described. If there are no things described, the system shall do nothing.

You can forbid a lot of things, but then you would have pages upon pages of requirements telling you things you may not even wanted implemented in the first place.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#26

Post by everyos_ » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

There's a class in Java (Robot) that lets you move the mouse like this, I messed with that when I was younger.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#27

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

coldcity_again wrote: post #20

I hoped for a moment this was a mouse pointer replacement that adds a tiny human character, who starts the day with energy and vigour... only to become more decrepit and worn out as 5pm approaches.

I guess f.lux could be considered similar?

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#28

Post by animuchan » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

This is infuriating in certain video games, like the StarCraft II single-player campaign: you're in the middle of 4 different things, your base is being slowly nibbled on by a few run-by zerglings, need to expand, babysit workers, creep / pylons / what have you. Then the game decides to show you something. It grabs your vision cone and forces it where it wants you to look -- slowly.

This specific action -- taking the thing away from the user, while they're actively engaging with it -- should be punishable by sacrificing the designer to Satan straight up. A bit harsh but justified.

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#29

Post by ErroneousBosh » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #17

This reminds me of that old flash site with an animated rabbit chasing the mouse cursor (thinking it’s a carrot). Still trying to dig up a working link.

There's one with a cat (and various other creatures) - oneko

https://github.com/glreno/oneko

Re: Mouse Pointer as a Mere Mortal

#30

Post by wrs » Tue, May 05, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

It’s an established thing in CAD programs (since a time before there were any personal computers) to move the cursor for you sometimes. I seem to recall this is one of the points of contention between KiCad and Wayland at the moment.