Flash 8 Cookbook

9.11. Creating Custom Cursors

Problem

You want to create a custom mouse cursor in place of the standard arrow/hand.

Solution

Use the Mouse.hide( ) method to hide the standard cursor, and then use ActionScript to tell a movie clip instance to follow the mouse.

Discussion

Although you cannot really replace the cursor icon in your Flash movies, you can create the illusion of a custom mouse cursor:

1. Create a movie clip symbol in which you add the artwork for your custom icon.

2. Create an instance of the movie clip symbol on the stage in the main timeline, and make sure to give it an instance name. You should make sure the instance is on a layer that appears above all the other layers in the main timeline.

3. Hide the standard mouse cursor with the Mouse.hide( ) method. Assuming that you want to hide the standard arrow/hand cursor from the moment the Flash movie starts to play, place the following code on the first keyframe of the main timeline:

4. Mouse.hide( );

5. Define a function that updates the movie clip to the mouse location by assigning the values of _xmouse and _ymouse to the _x and _y properties of the movie clip:

6. function updateCursorLocation( ):Void {

7. mCustomMouseCursor._x = _xmouse;

8. mCustomMouseCursor._y = _ymouse;

9. updateAfterEvent( );

10. }

11. Instruct Flash to continuously call the function using setInterval( ). You can call setInterval( ) with two parameters—a reference to the function and a number of milliseconds to use as the interval. To make the cursor move smoothly use an interval of something near ...