ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Name

Mouse.hide( ) Method — make the mouse pointer disappear

Availability

Flash 5

Synopsis

Mouse.hide( )

Description

The hide( ) method causes the normal mouse pointer (usually an arrow) to disappear when the mouse is over any part of the Player. The normal system pointer reappears when the mouse passes outside the Flash Player’s active stage area.

Usage

Note that in Flash 5, even after Mouse.hide( ) has been invoked, the normal system text I-beam cursor will appear when the mouse hovers over a text field.

Example

The hide( ) method is used to conceal the default system mouse pointer, typically in order to replace it with a custom pointer. In Flash, a custom pointer is nothing more than a movie clip that follows the mouse. Using the mouseMove event, we can cause a movie clip to follow the mouse by updating the clip’s _x and _ y properties with each passing frame. The following code demonstrates the technique:

// Code on the clip that acts as the custom pointer
onClipEvent (load) {
  Mouse.hide( );
}

onClipEvent (mouseMove) {
  _x = _root._xmouse;
  _y = _root._ymouse;
  updateAfterEvent( );
}

It may also be desirable to hide the custom pointer when the mouse is inactive, say, because the pointer has left the Flash Player’s active stage area, in which case the system pointer appears and there are two pointers on screen. The following code shows how to adapt the previous code to hide the cursor after 5 seconds of inactivity:

onClipEvent (load) { Mouse.hide( ); } onClipEvent (enterFrame) { if (getTimer( ...