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Don't hijack my mouse pointer

ruky.me

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Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#51

Post by vintagedave »

vintagedave wrote: post #49
teddyh wrote: post #9

> For example, making it slightly tilted because it was easier to draw on old screens. No. Some older systems actually had straight pointers. The slightly tilted design is, I assume, a result of wanting to point to something while still being able to see what is to the immediate left of the pointer; useful for left-to-right text.

The best video on mouse cursors I've seen, by Posy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg It doesn't exactly answer the question, but I -- someone who doesn't watch video and wants text, articles -- have watched this video twice over. It's worth it :)

In fact, I'll post on HN, it's so good. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48108704

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#52

Post by kotaKat »

juancn wrote: post #30

My other pet peeve is sites that override text selection and add a popup or something. I select long text when I'm reading, I use it for focus and to keep track where I was if I need to switch to some other task in the middle. In general, excessive customization is a net negative if it breaks expectations.

Don't forget if you copy and paste it you end up with extra bullshit you didn't copy...

Read more at: http://example.troll/lolyoufellforit.html

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#53

Post by juancn »

kotaKat wrote: post #52
juancn wrote: post #30

My other pet peeve is sites that override text selection and add a popup or something. I select long text when I'm reading, I use it for focus and to keep track where I was if I need to switch to some other task in the middle. In general, excessive customization is a net negative if it breaks expectations.

Don't forget if you copy and paste it you end up with extra bullshit you didn't copy... Read more at: http://example.troll/lolyoufellforit.html

Ohh you also made me think of those forms that disable paste!

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#55

Post by clickety_clack »

thesuitonym wrote: post #23
clickety_clack wrote: post #19

I remember when the internet was wild, young and fun, and this was something people did all the time. If you’re building Salesforce or SAP or Microsoft Word you should avoid it, but if you’re making a fun and weird website you should go to town.

Yeah, it's not really that it's difficult and AI has made it easier. It's super easy, it's just anybody who knows what they're doing learned that it's bad decades ago. Vibe coding didn't make it easier to change the cursor, it made it easier for incompetent people to write software.

I'd agree with you if people didn't complain about "dead internet theory" all the time. The internet used to be a wonderful place full of weird, unexpected stuff. Now it's all shopping websites, attention sucking addiction machines, blogs about what people do for work, and corporate data management. If that's what you're working on, you should stay within the lines and do all the stuff with the back button rules and the cursor rules and the color rules and the font rules and the animation rules and the sound rules etc. etc.

I'd love to see more people violating the design guidelines more often so that the internet can become a place worth visiting again, full of all the weird and wonderful ideas that people have locked up in their heads.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#56

Post by ASalazarMX »

matteason wrote: post #40

Google's design blog has a particularly egregious version of this: https://design.google/ The mouse blob morphs into the background of any buttons you hover over, which is technically impressive but annoying in practice

I thought, how bad it could be? It's actually very annoying since it doesn't even follow your mouse acceleration profile, the fancy cursor just does its own thing. It's a minor inconvenience, but very jarring at first.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#57

Post by BobaFloutist »

chrismorgan wrote: post #13
xnx wrote: post #10

I can count on my left hand the number of acceptable times to change my cursor motion or shape. This is one: https://neal.fun/cursor-camp/

Your choice of wording made me wonder if you have a different number of fingers on left and right hands.

They're using their right hand to operate their cursor.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#58

Post by dizhn »

I encountered a few sites that can actually pull off "Hit ESC to enable video" even with ublock origin. I think they are using some sort of game controller api. Haven't encountered anything more infuriating in terms browsers and input device and haven't found a solution to it.

Re: Don't hijack my mouse pointer

#60

Post by rolph »

These are alllegitimate techniques,but have great potential for abuse/leakingoff the user.

from the other side of the coin, these are some of the ways it was/still is done.

example of browser element focus:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement...

allows you to throw the focus around,in the browser.

example of WinAPI SetFocus :

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/...

allows you to throw the focus around in the OS

JS example of mouse as a trigger event:

https://www.w3docs.com/learn-javascript/moving-the-mouse-mou...

JS example of manipulating the mouse:

https://shyama.com/automating-mouse-clicks-and-movements-wit...

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