[Interest] Very old wait cursor on Mac OSX

[Dair Grant]

On 2 Apr 2012, at 08:50, Tony Rietwyk wrote:

> On Windows 7, it shows the correct spinning blue circle.  On OSX, it shows
> the a cursor with four quadrants - 2 white and 2 black, which is very old,
> and not anti-aliased, so it looks really ugly.  I expect to see the spinning
> rainbow cursor, or possibly the circle of short lines that appears when
> logging in.  

Unfortunately Cocoa doesn't provide a built-in "wait" cursor; however the spinning B&W quadrant is the historical "I'm busy" cursor so is arguably the correct one to use.

Mac OS X's Java implementation has an updated version of that cursor but unfortunately it's not available to non-Java apps:

    <http://www.flickr.com/photos/raza/2721851036/>

The spinning rainbow cursor is an indication that the app has stopped responding to events, which is a separate situation from "I'm busy working on something". If the app has stopped responding to events, users will assume it's OK to force quit it (and clicking the app icon in the Dock at that point will show "Force Quit" rather than "Quit").

The spinning bars activity indicator is not meant as a cursor - that's intended to be shown in a window.

Adobe did actually use the activity indicator as a cursor at one point, however a lot of people find it confusing (it would be like changing the cursor to a progress bar):

    <http://reliablybroken.com/b/2010/05/death-or-beachball/>


The lack of a wait cursor in Cocoa is really down to how Apple want cursors to be used. Ideally the app should always show an arrow/non-wait cursor, should display progress using an activity indicator/progress bar, and always respond to the user's input.

If you're in a task which just can't be stopped, the user needs to see a window-modal sheet or app-modal dialog explaining what's going on (ideally with a Cancel button to let them interrupt it, and a progress bar/activity indicator to show them something's happening).


-dair
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dair at refnum.com              http://www.refnum.com/