How to put customised mouse pointer images on your web page

[Jules Mitland]

Ive created a new website to make it easy to change the cursor image
on your website. It works with all the current web browsers, although
of course there are some people who will throw exceptions to that! All
it requires is copy and pasting some code into your site.

Enjoy it. Its free!

And please tell your friends.

http://www.webcursors.co.uk/

 

[Randy Webb]

Ive created a new website to make it easy to change the cursor image
on your website.

No you didn't. You created something that attempts to change it.

It works with all the current web browsers,

Then why doesn't it work in:

Mozilla 1.7.1
Opera 7.54
Firefox 1.7.3

Of those, which is not a "current web browser"?

All of the are up to date, yet your code doesn't work in *any* of them.

although of course there are some people who will throw exceptions to that!

When you make dubiously false claims, you must expect it (as you did),
because you WILL get rebuked for it.

All it requires is copy and pasting some code into your site.
Bullshit.

Enjoy it. Its free!

And as usual, you get what you pay for it. Nothing.

 

[Fred Oz]

All it requires is copy and pasting some code into your site.

And the code connects to your site every time one of my users' run
their mouse over your cursor - *if* the script runs at all. What do
you do with the information?

Why don't you let users download your cursors and run them from their
own site?

Are you aware cross-scripting does not work, even in IE with default
security settings? That IE blocks the cookie you try to set?

Sorry, I'm not going to ask my visitors to relax their browser security
just to get your cursors (or for me to get their curses).

Fred.

 

[Randy Webb]

And the code connects to your site every time one of my users' run
their mouse over your cursor - *if* the script runs at all. What do
you do with the information?

Actually it doesn't. It attempts to set the documents cursor via CSS.

Why don't you let users download your cursors and run them from their
own site?

Thats a good question.

Are you aware cross-scripting does not work, even in IE with default
security settings? That IE blocks the cookie you try to set?

Can you provide copy/paste of cookie code? The only lines of script in
the .js file is this:

document.body.style.cursor =
"url('http://www.webcursors.co.uk/mousepointers/clonewarsarrow.cur')";

It finds "cookie" nowhere in any of the pages.

Sorry, I'm not going to ask my visitors to relax their browser security
just to get your cursors (or for me to get their curses).

Can you back up that claim? The site actually works just fine in IE6
with a very tight rein on security, as all it does is set a style
property. It would be more efficient and less error prone to simply
offer it as a .css file with a definition though.

 

[RobG]

Actually it doesn't. It attempts to set the documents cursor via CSS.

The script was blocked from running on the PC I'm using, I assumed it
was because of a cookie.

In any case, the OP doesn't warn that the script attempts to connect to
the webcursors site whenever someone visits your site. Nor is there
any guarantee that the content of the script file will stay the same -
the script does not explicitly link to the JS file, but to an ASP page.
It could load anything, I am not aware of the possible ramifications of
that but I suspect it is not consistent with good security.

As it turns out, it is trivial to download the animated cursor by
following the .asp link, getting the .js file and using the url to
download the .ani file.

Can you back up that claim? The site actually works just fine in IE6
with a very tight rein on security, as all it does is set a style
property. It would be more efficient and less error prone to simply
offer it as a .css file with a definition though.

It does not work in my version of IE, which is on a corporate
controlled machine that I am not even allowed to _see_ the security
settings of, much less modify them. All I can say is that I get the
following error from IE:

Line: 86
Char: 1
Error: Object required
Code: 0

And that is from a file with only 20 lines in it, so I have no idea
what line 86 refers to.

In Firefox, I get:

Error: document.body has no properties
Source File: http>//www.webcursors.co.uk/webcursors.asp?i=flowerlink
Line: 85

So the script does not run at all for me.

Cheers, Fred.

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

[connects to server]

Actually it doesn't. It attempts to set the documents cursor via CSS.

It sets the cursor to a file located on the originating site, so it *is*
connected to when the cursor is set

[cookies]

Can you provide copy/paste of cookie code? The only lines of script in
the .js file is this:

document.body.style.cursor =
"url('http://www.webcursors.co.uk/mousepointers/clonewarsarrow.cur')";

It finds "cookie" nowhere in any of the pages.

Cookies can be set by the server, and in this case, they are.
Executing
---
document.body.style.cursor = "url('http://www.webcursors.co.uk/mousepointers/pointer.ani')";
---
contacts the server, and the server attempts to set a cookie (which will
be a "third party cookie" since it is not for the same domain as the
HTML page). Opera reports this:

---
This page wishes to set the cookie
ASPSESSIONIDCQDTRBAT="COCKMKJDAHKOPKLAHNJKBPAP"

This value will only be sent to documents on the server www.webcursors.co.uk, and paths that are starting in /.

The cookie will be deleted when Opera is closed.
----------------------
Full cookie request:

ASPSESSIONIDCQDTRBAT=COCKMKJDAHKOPKLAHNJKBPAP; path=/
---

It is probably harmless, and preventing it will hav no effect on the
functionality, but it is definitly unnecessary.

/L

 

[Jules Mitland]

Dont get too serious guys its just a bit of fun.

The ASP script keeps track of which cursors are the most popular so
they are displayed on www.webcursors.co.uk in order of popularity.

For people who dont know much about web programming its a very simple
and nice way for them to customise their web sites - without the need
to download any software which can contain spyware.

James.

 

[Randy Webb]

Dont get too serious guys its just a bit of fun.

I didn't. I just got serious about the "works in all browsers" when it
doesn't.

The ASP script keeps track of which cursors are the most popular so
they are displayed on www.webcursors.co.uk in order of popularity.

Why not track the downloads then? It removes any security concerns.

For people who dont know much about web programming its a very simple
and nice way for them to customise their web sites - without the need
to download any software which can contain spyware.

Then why not just give directions on the downloading of it and let
people use the .ani file?