Circular Cursors

[Rainfall]

We all know circular/crosshair mouse cursors are a bad idea, and arrows are the way to go...

 

But why?

Unable to find much info beyond "they're imprecise", and unsatisfied with "it's harder to tell the center" when you can point the center out in some way and I've played multiple games with circular cursors where I did just fine, I decided to quickly set up a set of circular cursors:

 

The Background Execution and Busy cursors are animated with the dot rotating on the grey circle and the circle filling and unfilling with white similar to YouTube's buffering icon, respectively. The black-ish area in the middle is semitransparent.

 

I've been using them for about a day now, and I haven't noticed anything that bad besides some muscle memory where every now and then I go slightly to the bottom-right of where I wanted to click (as I would with the arrow cursor, I'm just not used to the centered hotspot yet). It's probably just because it's been so little, but I've even had an easier time selecting text (since everything is centered the transition between pointing and selecting is slightly smoother).

 

And since I am so impatient for answers, I would love to know if anyone else ever tried using circular cursors in everyday computer use, or if there is any big drawback from arrows or other kinds of cursors.

 

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PS: I was unsure if this was something to post in the general subforum or in a particular one, so I settled for this one - sorry if it's not the right place.

 

PPS: added the cursors I'm using, if anyone's interested (original .pdn files included) - unfortunately you'll have to manually set them one by one, cause I'm too lazy to make an installer

circlecursors.zip

[YedZed]

Would you be able to export these? I'd like to try it out.

[Rainfall]

18 minutes ago, YedZed said:

Would you be able to export these? I'd like to try it out.

Sure, added them to the OP

[YedZed]

Seems pretty good, thanks!

Yep, the muscle memory thing is more real than I imagined. It's gonna be interesting to see what it's like when I get used to it!

[Willowwizard]

To be honest I think it's more of a history thing than anything. Unless there's some massive event that somehow impairs our ability to use the standard 'arrow' cursor, why change it when it's been that way for literally decades?

 

I think I'd compare it to the DVORAK keyboard. People who use the DVORAK layout do seem to enjoy it, but for the layperson they simply just don't have the time or willpower to learn a new keyboard layout when it offers little to no benefit over their QWERTY keyboard layout.

 

I do think the concept of a circular cursor is a pretty interesting idea though; and maybe I'll try out using a circular cursor pack someday, but for the time being I think I'd just stick to the regular old arrow cursor.

[Guest]

I guess this was just the start. People have different preferences to many things. If we didn’t, there’d only be one style of everything. 

Its interesting to see this circular thing. Maybe if they were really small and perinatales, I’d try it. Otherwise I’m fine with the arrow. 

[Rainfall]

Update after about a week: once I got used to it (and the whole "more slightly more to the right and lower than you would because arrows have the focus in the top left" was mostly gone), this actually feels more precise than the arrow, but maybe that's just me.

 

I think I'll actually stick with these for a bit longer, expected it to be trash given how much people seem to want arrow cursors and arrows only, but I am very positively surprised.