

Show HN: Add a custom cursor to improve your UX - matthewmueller
https://customcursor.com/direct

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thesimon
I'm not sure if it is my oldish (2010) MacBook pro, but the coursor is very
laggy.

And I'm not sure if this really improves your UX, it feels annoying just like
scrolljacking.

Do you have any data that shows it provides an increase in conversion etc?

~~~
jmhain
Also (very slightly) laggy on my 2014 MBP, even when forcing it to use the
discrete gpu.

~~~
fallat
It is not laggy at all on my HP Probook 6545b, which is pretty crap compared
to MBPs.

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zirkonit
Oh god. Time is a flat circle, 90s are having a comeback, now this, tomorrow
under construction gifs and faux 3D buttons in framesets.

The cringiest part is I do believe their usecase (huge annoying CLICK cursors
over “buy now” buttons) just _might_ increase conversions enough to be
worthwile.

~~~
ashark
This site triggered all kinds of old memories for me. Setting my cursor to be
an X-Wing in Win95/98\. VRML. That brief stretch of time when setting custom
scrollbar styles for your site was considered cool.

The status bar! We should bring that back.

<table><tr><td><table><tr><td>Welcome to my
website!</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

Firefox (I mean Phoenix, or is it Firebird?) being ultra slim and fast. I miss
that.

And yeah, framesets. Oh man. I bet there are millions of lines of Javascript
and CSS that exist solely because frames aren't hip.

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lelf
I don't even know in which universe this can be called “UX improvement”.

~~~
fit2rule
In the "just graduated from college and finding sober life a little difficult"
sense, I would imagine ...

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Raphmedia
Yeah... no. What about users that use high visibility cursors? Think
accessibility, people.

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forgottenpass
Is there anything to suggest this actually improves user experience rather
than just making it different?

This was an annoying javascript trick back in the 2000s, it still makes me ask
"WTF" when I go to a Gawker blog, the only place I know that still trys this
trick.

Do you have use cases (such as the contextual pointer/text cursor change)
where it productive to change the cursor?

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monokrome
I really hope that this is a joke. I figured that clicking "Buy Now" would go
to a page admitting that this was a joke, but it did not.

We knew that this was a bad idea in 2002, so I don't know why anyone would
think that we'd change our mind now.

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hodgesmr
15 years ago?
[http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/customcursor.htm](http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/customcursor.htm)

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RickS
Defying users' expectations about standard browser features is the polar
opposite of a UX improvement.

"I was on the fence about paying these guys $200/mo for their SaaS product,
until I saw that their cursor was a rocketship"

Unless you're building a website for children, I'd be very, very wary of this.

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Sir_Cmpwn
Firstly, don't do this.

Secondly, if you insist on doing it, don't pay 5 bucks for it. It's just
cursor: url(...);

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor)

~~~
matthewmueller
this is not consistently supported across browsers. plus no rocket-like
rotation :-)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
IE 6+, webkit 1.0+, firefox 1.5+. It's been supported for a loooooong time.

~~~
matthewmueller
We would love to have used cursor: url(...); but in our testing you run into
constraints (like sizing and rotation) that don't let you do the stuff we're
doing here.

~~~
drdeca
In my experience with cursor:url(); in Chrome at least, fairly large image
sizes are allowed, and work fine. I haven't tried on other browsers.

I don't understand why one would want the image to rotate?

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by rotation.

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methyl
I had no cursor at all before it loaded, you should fix that before getting
money from people.

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aspl
Ehh, it's an interesting Idea, not a big fan though to be honest. It's too
striking and the cursors are huge. It will probably be like the next scroll
tag, a way people can make shit appear in your face and it will just get
abused.

~~~
monokrome
Cursor size can change, but it's a non-interesting idea that people thought
was cool in 1998 and learned otherwise.

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colinramsay
There's obviously a lot of opportunity for abuse in this kind of thing - I'm
reminded of custom scrollbars - but I think their shopping cart example is
pretty compelling. As with everything, it needs to be used sparingly!

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ballpoint
This made me cry.

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jaderobbins1
If you want to improve your user experience this should be the LAST thing you
would do. I was expecting them to have a more accurate or easy to see cursor,
but it's just the scrolling marquee all over again.

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rcthompson
I see a lot of comments taking this seriously. Is it actually serious? It
looks like they're accepting real money, but I still have trouble believing
it's meant to be taken seriously.

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Someone1234
The "Pay With Card" and "Pay With Paypal" buttons simply don't work for me.
Chrome 39.

~~~
matthewmueller
Hmm interesting, they're working for me on Chrome 39. Are there any JS errors?

~~~
NicoSantangelo
Yes, StripeCheckout is being called when it's not defined and they have a
problem removing a Node.

~~~
matthewmueller
Ahh good catch, got it. we accidentally had "async" in our <script> tag.
Thanks!

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minimaxir
This causes my cursor to _disappear_ when I mouse outside the window, which
makes this DOA.

~~~
matthewmueller
Hm, that shouldn't happen. Which browser are you using?

~~~
minimaxir
Safari 7 and Safari 8. I cam say I'm not seeing it in Chrome though.

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jbob2000
No No NO NO! First of all, mobile users don't even have cursors. Second of
all... just NO.

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dewey
Is that the new "smooth scrolling"? It's equally annoying.

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radoslawc
Looks like "install new smileys" malware all over again.

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abpai
Reimagined an old idea for practical usecases

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jpetersonmn
Not an improvement at all. Highly annoying.

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mmagin
Somehow reminds me of Comet Cursor. :)

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bvanslyke
HN is unable to identify jokes.

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dlsym
I'm not convinced.

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underbluewaters
Gave me cancer

