[Interest] Very old wait cursor on Mac OSX

[Tony Rietwyk]

Hi Dair, 

Thanks-you for your very thorough explanation.  

Using an animated strip graphic similar to what MS Outlook 2010 does seems
to be a good solution for my app.  

Tony.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: interest-bounces+tony=rightsoft.com.au at qt-project.org
> [mailto:interest-bounces+tony=rightsoft.com.au at qt-project.org] On Behalf
> Of Dair Grant
> Sent: Monday, 2 April 2012 6:22 PM
> To: interest at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Interest] Very old wait cursor on Mac OSX
> 
> 
> 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
> ___________________________________________________
> dair at refnum.com              http://www.refnum.com/
> 
> 
> 
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