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Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors!

MacNN Software 50 posts Feb 12, 2003 to Feb 15, 2003
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#1 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 12:36 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #1
Hi all,

I promised to let you know when our new haxie allowing you to customize, edit, animate and share cursors will be out. So it is now - meet Mighty Mouse!

So why is this haxie great and how it is different from others serving the same purpose?

First of all, it doesn't modifies any system files. This means you don't need to back up CoreGraphics.framework, you are not required to enter the administrator password, and you're saved from the whole hassle surrounding the process.

Second, it allows you to redefine more cursors - namely, Arrow, I-Beam, Wait, Small Alias, Big Alias, Small Copy, Big Copy, Move and Forbidden.

Third, you can animate any cursor you want - so you can have a cool looking animated arrow - so your Windows XP friends can finally shut up.

Fourth, who said you are limited to 16x16 cursors? Cursors can be as big as you want. Want a 128x128 animated wait cursor? No Problem.

Fifth, you can edit all the cursors right in the Mighty Mouse preference pane. Each frame of the animation can have its own alpha mask, allowing you to create beautiful animations.

Sixth, you can share the cursors you have created and download the ones other users decided to share at ResExcellence, the premiere GUI customization website.

Seventh, you can magnify the cursor so it takes more or less space on the screen - this can be very handy if you have special accessibility needs or just want your cursor be more easily locatable.

Eighth, it is only US $10, just like our other haxies. We feel this is very reasonable for the amount of features Mighty Mouse offers. Oh, and it doesn't disables any features while unregistered - it will only remind you every hour and reset the cursors to the default state, so you can fully test drive it for as long as you would like.

Give it a try and tell us what you think! It's up to you, creative minds, to create stunning cursorsets we all will drool about.

http://www.haxies.com/mightymouse/
#7 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 15:22 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #7
I haven't tested it out yet since I'm not home, but since this doesn't modify system files, is it possible other users can have their own them for cursors? If so, I am definitely going to buy this.
#9 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 16:36 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #9
Does it come with decent alternative cursors, like BeachBall did?
Those on the ResExcellence page at the moment are just appalling.
Seams a bit like Konflabulator(sp?) at the moment, a really excellent framework, just needing developers with taste to support it.

An important question. Does it grind your system to a halt or introduce unexplained instability (like the other Unsanity haxie's)?
#14 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 20:31 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #14
I've been using this for a couple months now and I can tell you all finally that it's amazing and has never caused any problems or slowdowns or anything weird at all with my machine. Even though my copy was freeware I am now going to register my 'official' version, because it's that great.

Here's the full version of my StealthFighter cursor that was kindof included with the app as the 'flasher' arrow. It was called that because it has very small lights on it that you can see against dark backgrounds, but that name sucks so I changed it. I made a right handed version for freaks that prefer that over the original lefty one....

Download them here by clicking the pix below...



#16 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 21:14 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #16
As soon as I have the classic watch cursor back this thing is getting registered. I would much appreciate someone doing it for me (speed has got to be just right!) but if I happen to get around to it first I'll post it.

Slava, smeger, et al, you guys are @#$%ing incredible.
#19 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 22:30 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #19
Quote:
Originally posted by Nebagakid:
the wait cursors, the custom ones, never work for me, it just doesn't show it!
It works perfectly for me. Two questions: there was a bug when it initially released, did you download the fixed version? and here comes the obvious one: are you sure you hit "Apply Changes"?

Or are you just bragging about how fast your machine is and it just went *woosh* over me?
#20 Wed, 12 Feb 2003 - 22:35 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #20
shebang. fabulous. executed so well. two things tho'. first, perhaps a scaling option for each individual cursor state rather than the across the board one. second, slava where is that gear/drill pointer you teased us with in the previous thread? best looking one i've seen so far.
#22 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 01:33 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #22
Quote:
Originally posted by Bubba Jones:
second, slava where is that gear/drill pointer you teased us with in the previous thread? best looking one i've seen so far.


That's available from WinCustomize: http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.a...ding&library=25

Unfortunately the author of this cursor have never replied to our emails so we didn't include it in the package. You may also check Drops cursors from the same author on that site, it's kinda weird too.

Cursors frame count: cursor can have up to 15 frames animation. This is a Mac OS X limitation. Hope that's more than enough though!
#25 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 06:51 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #25
Quote:
Originally posted by Dace:
Do you need quartz extreme for cursor scaling? 'Cause when I oversize a cursor I get an ugly, pixelated cursor.



I think the upscaling is only for people who's vision is so bad that they can't see how ugly and pixelated it is.



Quote:
Originally posted by slava:
That's available from WinCustomize: [url]http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?




Could you please explain how to import those windoze cursors into Mighty Mouse?
#26 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 07:40 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #26
Quote:
Originally posted by Dace:
Do you need quartz extreme for cursor scaling? 'Cause when I oversize a cursor I get an ugly, pixelated cursor.


Any cursor will look pixelated when you overscale it, you need to actually make a larger cursor, say 128x128 to get a nice smooth oversize cursor.

Wagmedia- true that
#27 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 09:07 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #27
Quote:
Originally posted by mrtew:
Could you please explain how to import those windoze cursors into Mighty Mouse?


Easy. Download the cursor, and use Stuffit Expander on the .zip file you'll get. You'll get a file with .CurXPTheme extension. If Stuffit Expander was smart enough, you'll also get a folder named the same, with a bunch of PNG files. If it was not, drag the resulting CurXPTheme file on Stuffit Expander again, and it will produce such a folder.

Once you have the above mentioned folder, drag it over the cursors table in Mighty Mouse. That's it!
#28 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 10:22 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #28
Quote:
Originally posted by slava:
That's available from WinCustomize: http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.a...ding&library=25

Unfortunately the author of this cursor have never replied to our emails so we didn't include it in the package. You may also check Drops cursors from the same author on that site, it's kinda weird too.

Cursors frame count: cursor can have up to 15 frames animation. This is a Mac OS X limitation. Hope that's more than enough though!


ah so. thank you much. guess i would have found it eventually. was clicking thru their library yesterday. wish there was a filter on that site for "good cursors" and "freaking ugly cursors" i think i got thru page 45 and i downloaded like 3 sets. hey that's what you get with windoze people doing design work.

btw, love the registration reminder. looked away from my puter late last night, took me totally off guard. lol!

incredibly well executed app. totally useless(except for scaling for visually disabled people) but extremly cool and well executed. my ten bucks will be on it's way sometime soon.
#29 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 13:52 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #29
Ive started an Aqua based cursor set which utlizes more of the "Aqua-ness" of Aqua throughout the cursor set. Here is what the main cursor looks like. Its nothing more than a extension of Aqua into the system a bit further.


There are two cursors in the shot to show how it looks over light and dark backgrounds.
#31 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 14:08 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #31
Quote:
Originally posted by swiz:
Ive started an Aqua based cursor set which utlizes more of the "Aqua-ness" of Aqua throughout the cursor set. Here is what the main cursor looks like. Its nothing more than a extension of Aqua into the system a bit further.


There are two cursors in the shot to show how it looks over light and dark backgrounds.


Nice! Exactly what I was looking for. Will you make it available for download when you feel it's ready?
#33 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 14:24 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #33
Dont's know's if this should be posted here or email to unsanity. mixture of suggestion and question about masking.

obviously we're gonna see some partialy transparent cursor soon, crosshairs and what not. (quick how-to in future documentation would be nice) but first let's travel back in time a bit. anybody here remember the boilerplate kaliedoscope scheme? one of the best imho. but in addition to it overall industrial coolness, i wonder if anyone noticed/remembers that the pointer it had was fairly basic around the tip, but the tailend was a transparent bubble. what was cool was that the transparent part was actually a magnifiying glass. what ever you put the mouse over was the same size, but what ever was underneath the bubble part was magnified. i have absolutely no idea how this was done.

anyone care to enlighten me, or go ahead and make the same? or is this a feature that needs to be coded into mightymouse?
#35 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 14:49 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #35
I think that it would Be cool if MightyMouse took advantage of "onclick" events. That way, we could make the mouse "do" somthing when it clicks something.

i.e. An explosion animation when double clicking a folder.

A blood squirt when double clicking on a folder.

A ripple effect when single clicking the desktop.

The effects could be limited to single and double clicks. Though I am not sure how the software would know the difference of the first click in the double click from just a single click.
Anyway, I think it would rock. Heck, we could just take a great deal of the "Poofs" that are already out there and make mouse event animations out of them. With permission of course
#36 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 15:00 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #36
Quote:
Originally posted by swiz:
Ive started an Aqua based cursor set which utlizes more of the "Aqua-ness" of Aqua throughout the cursor set. Here is what the main cursor looks like. Its nothing more than a extension of Aqua into the system a bit further.


There are two cursors in the shot to show how it looks over light and dark backgrounds.


That's great! Do you plan to add a little drop shadow?

Cold Metal theme (animated)



http://homepage.mac.com/dark3lf/.cv...sitx-binhex.hqx

Obviously I didn't create this, I just merely converted it.
#37 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 15:32 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #37
Quote:
Originally posted by dark3lf:
That's great! Do you plan to add a little drop shadow?

Cold Metal theme (animated)



http://homepage.mac.com/dark3lf/.cv...sitx-binhex.hqx

Obviously I didn't create this, I just merely converted it.


It actually has a nice faint drop shadow under it but if you would prefer a darkerr shadow I can make two versions with two different shadow densities.

Ryan, Im emailing you now, the BeOS cursor was next on my list .
#38 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 15:42 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #38
Here's a few png's I made for use with cursor XP. But since you guys can use them now, I thought I'd post them

Original aqua blob


Slight mod for wib (working in background)


Oh and if you guys want the whole set (yes I know you already have the default OS X cursors , but mine differ a lil bit and each has a drop shadow) here it is:

Default OS X cursor set

Chris
#40 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 16:13 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #40
Quote:
Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Can anyone make a real version of Quartz Extreme Mouse w/ Shadow? The one that is included with MM is basically an original mouse with shadow added. The new one isn't pixelated.


With your design skills, I'm sure you could fix the ones I posted in no time (just blur in PS the areas that are pixelated)

btw for those that dont know, any cursor XP theme is just a zip file, so rename the .curXPTheme to .zip, then you'll see the separate png's

oops, I forgot, my cursor XP set doesnt have the shadows included because cursor XP lets you add your own custom ones

Chris
#41 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 16:38 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #41
Quote:
Originally posted by Bubba Jones:
...but first let's travel back in time a bit. anybody here remember the boilerplate kaliedoscope scheme? one of the best imho. but in addition to it overall industrial coolness, i wonder if anyone noticed/remembers that the pointer it had was fairly basic around the tip, but the tailend was a transparent bubble. what was cool was that the transparent part was actually a magnifiying glass. what ever you put the mouse over was the same size, but what ever was underneath the bubble part was magnified. i have absolutely no idea how this was done.[/B]


i love that scheme! i have dreams of that on osx! the transparent part wasn't a magnifying glass, it just inverted what was under it. however, a magnifying arrow would be awesome.
as would an arrow that rotated to face the direction it was moving in, like an Escape Velocity ship.. mm..

- - - - -
http://n8x.vze.com
#43 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 18:55 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #43
Quote:
Originally posted by swiz:
You can grab a beta of the Aqua Cursor set here:
http://swizcore.com/SS/themes/SS_Aqua_Cursor_Beta.sit

I am looking for suggestions from this one, you'll notice the "Forbidden" cursor looks different from the other cursors, which do you prefer regarding the "Aqua" feel? Also, more or less shadow?


Hey, I like that a lot! If you are experimenting with other versions, yes a more pronounced drop shadow would be nice and perhaps make it 30-50% larger? This one is just a bit small, but other than that, it's great!
#44 Thu, 13 Feb 2003 - 19:24 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #44
Quote:
Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Can anyone make a real version of Quartz Extreme Mouse w/ Shadow? The one that is included with MM is basically an original mouse with shadow added. The new one isn't pixelated.


The one that's included was sucked right from the bowels of the operating system - it's not a mockup.

It might have gotten double-premultiplied, though. I'll look into it when I get a chance.

GODucks - I've thought about that feature a bit. It might be doable at some point.

mrtew - sorry I forgot to change the name. There was so much going on with the release that it completely slipped my mind. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!

Swiz - the cursors look sweet, and thanks again for staying quiet while people were harassing you!
#46 Fri, 14 Feb 2003 - 02:16 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #46
slava - How about adding a hue wheel in future versions? So that you can easily change the color of a cursor to fit your preference? It would not work for black and white cursors, but it would be cool for colored ones. You already have a scale option, and the hue wheel could be right next to it.

It's amazing how easy it's to create a cursor, btw.
#47 Fri, 14 Feb 2003 - 04:19 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #47
Quote:
Originally posted by bOOzo:
slava - How about adding a hue wheel in future versions? So that you can easily change the color of a cursor to fit your preference? It would not work for black and white cursors, but it would be cool for colored ones. You already have a scale option, and the hue wheel could be right next to it.

It's amazing how easy it's to create a cursor, btw.


That sounds like a cool idea, I'll pass it to smeger. BTW, he is the developer on that haxie, so you can direct the feature requests to him.
#48 Fri, 14 Feb 2003 - 04:21 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #48
Quote:
Originally posted by n8x:

thought i'd try making a cursor, because 90% of the ones i've found are horrid. but then again, this ones pretty weird too. it does do the little throbby thing though (they're all animated). you can get it by clicking the preview, i beleive.


Hey, they are weird, but they are pretty nifty -- it's great that the creative part of us is starting to pick up Mighty Mouse mightiness... Can't wait to see more unique cursors from you!
#49 Sat, 15 Feb 2003 - 04:53 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #49
In addition to the hue slider, a slider for saturisation would be neat.

I've also discovered that Mighty Mouse use masks dfferently from the system. For example, the QE cursor that is bundled does not look like the original QE cursor because how the masking is handled makes it look different. And I compared it to the original QE cursor in Photoshop and they are exactly the same, it's just that they display differently.
I have also noticed this when converting some of the wait cursors I made for Blobber/Beachball. They displayed fine when patching the system, but now they look like they look pretty bad.
Is this something that willbe fixed/changed?
#50 Sat, 15 Feb 2003 - 15:04 Mighty Mouse: Customize and animate your cursors! — #50
Quote:
Originally posted by bOOzo:
In addition to the hue slider, a slider for saturisation would be neat.

I've also discovered that Mighty Mouse use masks dfferently from the system. For example, the QE cursor that is bundled does not look like the original QE cursor because how the masking is handled makes it look different. And I compared it to the original QE cursor in Photoshop and they are exactly the same, it's just that they display differently.
I have also noticed this when converting some of the wait cursors I made for Blobber/Beachball. They displayed fine when patching the system, but now they look like they look pretty bad.
Is this something that willbe fixed/changed?



I suspect that the issue here is premultiplying. MM premultiplies your cursor when you apply it, and the QE one was probably already premultiplied when I sucked it out of the OS, so it gets double-premultiplied. I have no idea what the issue is with the Blobber/Beachball cursors, as I've never checked out the way they store their cursors.

Yes, this will be fixed. In the meantime, you can work around it by unpremultiplying (pre-divide?) the QE cursor and your Blobber guys.

I screwed around in Photoshop a bit to see if I could unpremultiply the QE cursor, but I didn't come up with anything - I think I'll need to do it in code. Premultiplying with an inverted mask should unpremultiply.

Just to clarify, this is not a problem that affects newly designed cursors.