Re: Busy-cursor?

[Lee Willis <lee gbdirect co uk>]

Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at> writes:

>  Peter> We are talking about a normal mousecursor, with an small
>  Peter> hourglass attached to it. I think most users will understand
>  Peter> what that means.
> 
> (I'd venture that pointer+small-hourglass means that the app in
> question is accepting input, but still quite busy at the moment. While 
> another app loads the panel is not busy at all. So at least *this*
> interpretation of the cursor would be wrong.)

Well I'd interpret it *slightly* differently ...  I'd take it to mean
that the last thing that you requested the app to do is still in
progress but the app is ready to undertake another task if you
wish. This analogy at least works (For me anyway!)  in that you ask the
panel to start a program which it launches but until the launching of
this program is complete your requested action hasn't finished hence the
hourglass, but the panel will accept input/requests hence the arrow. 

FWIW I still prefer the greyed out approach, or I have an alternate but
similar idea. When the cursor moves over the button in question a
balloon help pops up with information about how many of this app are
currently in the process of starting. Of course if the answer is none
there would be no popup but if you click an icon, and then move over it
again you'd get a message saying '1 copy launching' or something
similar.

Just my 2p although know I come to think about it it seems rather
awkward to code and bloat-ish so maybe the greying but allowing clicks
is the best approach ...

Lee.
-- 
I was doing object-oriented assembly at 1 year old ...  
For some reason my mom insists on calling it "Playing with blocks"