Re: [Usability] Locating the mouse pointer when it is on the bottom of the screen?

[Dave Ahlswede <mightyquinn letterboxes org>]

On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 12:10 +0100, David Christian Berg wrote:
> > You forgot to tell us why.
> 
> I'm sorry... it was late at night.
> Flipping the cursor is very distracting. Take MS Word for example, where
> the cursor flips on the left hand side of the document. I always wonder:
> "What's going on?" The cursor changes without giving me any information
> in the change. Also I believe that an upside-down cursor will look
> really ugly.
> Since I don't see the benefit (Seriously the fastest way to get to an
> item is a straight line and not going to the bottom first and then
> moving horizontally. This straight line can be infinitely long since
> there is a screen-edge in between) to me it's a bad trade off to have
> strange cursor behaviour and looks traded in for nothing.
> _If_ this should be introduced, the cursor *must* flip on the right hand
> side of the screen as well, since this would be the consistent, expected
> behaviour. Then of course you can no longer hide it, which isn't that
> much of a problem though.
> Hope my point is a little clearer now. I admit it's a very personal
> point of view, but I believe there are more reasons supporting this.

Instead of flipping the cursor, would it be less distracting to
vertically bump it up a few pixels (just the cursor image, not the mouse
cursor itself), so you see a little bit of arrow at the bottom of the
screen, no matter what?