
90s Cursor Effects - plurby
https://github.com/tholman/90s-cursor-effects
======
pierrec
" _To be added (Please, go ahead!) [...] Cursor Trail_ "

This was an OS feature (and still is, at least on Win7), rather than a cheesy
webpage effect. The browser was never allowed to know what the cursor looks
like, so it's impossible for webpages to implement a native-looking mouse
trail that works consistently.

The OS mouse trail was super useful on LCD screens with sluggish pixels:
without it, the cursor would be essentially invisible if you moved the mouse
too fast. Couldn't use my NEC Ready 120LT without this feature!

~~~
6502nerdface
> The OS mouse trail was super useful on LCD screens with sluggish pixels:
> without it, the cursor would be essentially invisible if you moved the mouse
> too fast.

It's also (still) super useful for visually impaired users.

~~~
toyg
I've also found it very useful to bend VmWare Fusion to my will -- between
Windows in the guest, VmWare and the OSX host (with high-res / Retina
screens), the cursor is often "off" relative to the actual pointer... until I
enable the trail in Windows, at which point everything works properly. I have
no idea why.

~~~
wtallis
Most cursor glitches end up being a mismatch between hardware-drawn cursors
and software-rendered. Turning the trails on forces Windows to draw the cursor
in software, which puts the cursor much earlier in the graphics pipeline and
makes it much more accessible to other things like f.lux or apparently
Fusion's integration.

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wlesieutre
I have fond memories of the "Elastic Bullets" trail (all the cool kids had it
on their websites).

Most of my early javascript snippets came from javascript.internet.com [1],
but I found a copy on yaldex [2]. More classics available there and
javascript-fx.com [3]

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20000619201149/http://javascript....](http://web.archive.org/web/20000619201149/http://javascript.internet.com/)

[2]
[http://www.yaldex.com/FSMessages/ElasticBullets.htm](http://www.yaldex.com/FSMessages/ElasticBullets.htm)

[3] [http://javascript-fx.com/mouse_trail/index.html](http://javascript-
fx.com/mouse_trail/index.html)

~~~
degenerate
Came here to post this, and was glad to see it already :)

Here's a page that has them a little more like I remember:
[http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts/elasticballs.htm...](http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts/elasticballs.html)

------
frik
Suggestion: search through the Geocity, Tripod, ... archives that survived and
use Archive.org

About mouse cursors and effects: Windows 95 Plus CD contained many desktop
themes incl various themed cursor, background wallpapers, animated
screensaver. Wonderful for its time.

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oliv__
This brought back memories from old times: I can remember copying some
Javascript code to a forum I used to manage to get snow flakes to fall on the
screen (during christmas). I loved the effect!

------
Cyberdog
I know this is probably a losing battle, but I have to try: The _cursor_ is
the text insertion point. The thing that moves when you move the mouse and is
arrow-shaped by default is correctly called the _pointer._

~~~
dalke
The publication record shows that "mouse cursor" is completely acceptable. For
examples from
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22mouse+cursor%22](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22mouse+cursor%22)
:

Smalltalk-72 manual (1976), page 2 -
[http://mame.myds.me/bitsavers/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/Sma...](http://mame.myds.me/bitsavers/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/Smalltalk-72_Instruction_Manual_Mar76.pdf)
:

> The Mouse: The little rectangular object with three buttons that usually
> sits to the right of the keyboard is called a mouse. Move it around while
> watching the screen. An arrow (mouse cursor) will be moving in response to
> it. This is how we point to objects on the screen.

Raster Graphics for Interactive Programming Environments (1979) -
[http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xer...](http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-79-6_Raster_Graphics_for_Interactive_Programming_Environments.pdf)

> Graphical input. The user is provided with a "mouse," a coordinate input
> device with three pushbuttons. The mouse rolls along a table top and is
> tracked by a cursor that moves on the screen. The mouse can thus be used to
> point to objects already displayed on the screen, or simply to identify a
> coordinate position.

The Blit: A Multiplexed Graphics Terminal ("Sometime in 1983", by Rob Pike) -
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.611...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.611.4835&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

> The state of mouse input is reflected by the cursor tracked by the mouse as
> it is moved. Usually, the cursor is an arrow pointing to the pixel at the
> mouse’s location. A program may change the cursor to reflect its state.

A Study in Interactive 3-D Rotation Using 2-D Control Devices" (1990) -
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/asellen/public...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/asellen/publications/3-D%20rotation%2088.pdf)

> If the mouse button is depressed while the mouse cursor is inside the
> circle, left-and-right and up-and-down movement of the mouse will rotate the
> object left-and right and up-and-down on the screen.

Fluid DTMouse: Better Mouse Support for Touch-Based Interactions (2006) -
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.416...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.416.277&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

> For example, once you have moved the mouse cursor over a small target that
> is to be dragged, you do not want the act of switching to mouse dragging
> mode to move the cursor off of the target .

~~~
pvg
And both used interchangeably in this collection of draft Mac documentation
from the early 80s (it is labeled 'Inside Macintosh Vol 1' but isn't really)
[https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applemacIn84_27699101](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applemacIn84_27699101):

Cursors

A cursor is a small image that appears on the screen and is controlled by the
mouse. (It appears only on the screen, and never in an off-screen bit image.)
Other Macintosh documentation calls this image a "pointer", since it points to
a location on the screen. To avoid confusion with other meanings of "pointer"
in this manual and other Toolbox documentation, we use the alternate term
"cursor".

------
elinchrome
Those were faster in the late 90s. How is it so slow?

~~~
tamana
How did it work back then? A transparent canvas overlay? CSS element position
changes?

~~~
PavlovsCat
> A transparent canvas overlay

Yes. Using the DOM for a lot of individual spans totally kills this.

------
LeoPanthera
I remember one particularly annoying one from that era was an analogue clock
that used to surround the mouse pointer. I wonder if that still exists
anywhere.

~~~
detaro
Saw this in the issues? [https://github.com/tholman/90s-cursor-
effects/issues/2#issue...](https://github.com/tholman/90s-cursor-
effects/issues/2#issuecomment-180867624)

~~~
LeoPanthera
That's the one! Ah, memories. It seems weird when not combined with a
GeoCities logo.

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envy2
This reminds me of cleaning the Comet Cursor[1] adware, which did this (and
other random and obnoxious effects), off of people's PCs back in the early
2000s. IIRC, it was bundled with Real Player and usually accompanied with
Gator...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Cursor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Cursor)

------
dookahku
I got really excited when I saw the title, thinking this would be like my old
VT100 days or something. :(

