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Don't hijack my mouse pointer

ruky.me

31–40 of 63 posts

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#31
post #6

Not nearly as nasty as scroll hijacking so the page moves at a different speed than what I've instructed it to move at. Or pastejacking - when you're trying to copy a piece of text and the page makes you grab an entirely different string to what you'd highlighted and selected.

Or right-click hijacking. e.g. Discord's web app, where I might want to right click a link in a message to copy it. But instead, Discord forces their own right-click menu with no such option.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#32
post #6

Not nearly as nasty as scroll hijacking so the page moves at a different speed than what I've instructed it to move at. Or pastejacking - when you're trying to copy a piece of text and the page makes you grab an entirely different string to what you'd highlighted and selected.

I'd add preventing text selection, right-clicking or pasting from the clipboard to the list. I hate when websites do that.

Brave actually added a force paste option recently for such cases.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add preventing text selection, right-clicking or pasting from the clipboard to the list. I hate when websites do that.

There's an old, but good, set of browser plugins called "don't fuck with paste" that helps a little, at least.

Setting dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled in about:config to false will prevent sites from messing with cut and paste.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#35
post #6

Not nearly as nasty as scroll hijacking so the page moves at a different speed than what I've instructed it to move at. Or pastejacking - when you're trying to copy a piece of text and the page makes you grab an entirely different string to what you'd highlighted and selected.

Slack does this with links (they all point to Slack instead of the URL in the message) and it drives me nuts.

Same in Discord, crappy apps.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#36
post #2

> For example it can be as simple as this, to something completely unacceptable as this. I can't see any difference between these in terms of UX - I got annoyed just looking at them.

The bad example has significant lag compared to the good.

Also, except when the pointer is over something, it isn't actually a pointer so you might not be able to position it precisely onto something. While trying to position it over something small⁰ it is going to cover the target making the process partially guesswork.

--------

[0] ignoring for a moment that something so small is likely bad UX in itself, like the single-pixel¹ border drag targets and scrollbars found on many things these days

[1] see similar discussions over in the thread about older UIs at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48104428 for this and related issues - even when we have far fewer pixels on the screen a single pixel wide/tall/both target was often considered bad form.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#37

That's not "hijacking your mouse pointer" that's just changing the cursor. Absolutely change my cursor. But to something that looks cool, like a dragon or a sword. Not to a circle.

This. Hijacking the pointer in the browser is also possible. There are webgl games that do it.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#38
post #6

Not nearly as nasty as scroll hijacking so the page moves at a different speed than what I've instructed it to move at. Or pastejacking - when you're trying to copy a piece of text and the page makes you grab an entirely different string to what you'd highlighted and selected.

Spacebar hijacking, it is how I scroll webpages

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#39
post #28

I find it a bit surprising that there is no option in a browser to stop this kind of behavior. There is even a suggestion on mozzila.org. With this option placed it would just be another 'fun thing' you don't need to mind.

The cursor icon is useful as an indicator of function - e.g. the "I" styled character over text (where you can select/highlight then copy), and the "hand" icon to indicate a link.

Being able to change the cursor to indicate a behaviour can be beneficial, especially with dynamic DOM elements.

Going rogue with mouse cursor icons is a UX minefield though, and it's usually done without any UX assessment of the impact.

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