4.6. Mouse Makeover: All Versions If your fondness for the standard Windows arrow cursor begins to wane, you can assert your individuality by choosing a different pointer shape. For starters, you might want to choose a bigger arrow cursora great solution on today's tinier-pixel, shrunken-cursor monitors . Begin by right-clicking the desktop and, from the shortcut menu, choosing Personalize. In the dialog box, click Mouse Pointers. You arrive at the dialog box shown in Figure 4-6.  | Figure 4-6. Ever lose your mouse pointer while working on a laptop with a dim screen? Maybe pointer trails could help. Or have you ever worked on a desktop computer with a mouse pointer that seems to take forever to move across the desktop? Try increasing the pointer speed . | |
At this point, you can proceed in any of three ways: POWER USERS' CLINIC
Password-Protecting Screen Savers | | If you work in an office, password-protecting your screen saver is a great idea. It means that if you wander away to get coffee, and your screen saver kicks in, your snoopy co-workers can't stop by your desk and wiggle the mouse to see what you were working on. To set this up, turn on the "On resume, logon screen" checkbox. Now, the act of "awakening" the PC by clicking the mouse or pressing a key merely produces the standard logon screen. Until somebody types the correct password, the data that's currently on your screen is safe from prying eyes. If you don't work in a public place, however, and you're actually annoyed that you have to re-log on every time your screen saver kicks in, now you know the solution. Turn off the checkbox. |
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Scheme . Windows has many more cursors than the arrow pointer. At various times, you may also see the spinning circular cursor (which means, "Wait; I'm thinking," or "Wait; I've crashed"), the I-beam cursor (which appears when you're editing text), the little pointing-finger hand made famous by Microsoft's advertising (which appears when you point to a Web page link), and so on. All of these cursors come prepackaged into design-coordinated sets called schemes . To look over the cursor shapes in a different scheme, use the Scheme drop-down list; the corresponding pointer collection appears in the Customize list box. Some are cute: Dinosaur, for example, displays an animated marching cartoon dinosaur instead of the hourglass cursor. Some are functional: the ones whose names include "large" offer jumbo, magnified cursors ideal for very large screens or failing eyesight. When you find one that seems like an improvement over the Windows Aero (system scheme) set, click OK. -
Select individual pointers . You don't have to change to a completely different scheme; you can also replace just one cursor. To do so, click the pointer you want to change, and then click the Browse button. You're shown the vast array of cursor-replacement icons (which are in the Local Disk (C:)  Windows Cursors folder). Click one to see what it looks like; double-click to select it. -
Create your own pointer scheme . Once you've replaced a cursor shape, you've also changed the scheme to which it belongs. At this point, either click OK to activate your change and get back to work, or save the new, improved scheme under its own name, so you can switch back to the original when nostalgia calls. To do so, click the Save As button, name the scheme, and then click OK.
Tip: The "Enable pointer shadow" checkbox at the bottom of this tab is pretty neat. It casts a shadow on whatever's beneath the cursor, as though it's skimming just above the surface of your screen.
4.6.1. 4.6.1.1. Pointer Options Clicking the Pointer Options tab offers a few more random cursor- related functions (see Figure 4-6). -
Pointer speed . It comes as a surprise to many people that the cursor doesn't move five inches when the mouse moves five inches on the desk. Instead, you can set things up so that moving the mouse one millimeter moves the pointer one full inch or vice versausing the Pointer speed slider. It may come as even greater surprise that the cursor doesn't generally move proportionally to the mouse's movement, regardless of your "Pointer speed" setting. Instead, the cursor moves farther when you move the mouse faster. How much farther depends on how you set the "Select a pointer speed" slider. The Fast setting is nice if you have an enormous monitor, since it prevents you from needing an equally large mouse pad to get from one corner to another. The Slow setting, on the other hand, can be frustrating, since it forces you to constantly pick up and put down the mouse as you scoot across the screen. (You can also turn off the disproportionate-movement feature completely by turning off "Enhance pointer precision.") -
Snap To . A hefty percentage of the times when you reach for the mouse, it's to click a button in a dialog box. If you, like millions of people before you, usually click the default (outlined) buttonsuch as OK, Next, or Yesthe Snap To feature can save you the effort of positioning the cursor before clicking. When you turn on Snap To, every time a dialog box appears, your mouse pointer jumps automatically to the default button, so that all you need to do is click. (And to click a different button, such as Cancel, you have to move the mouse only slightly to reach it.) -
Display pointer trails . The options available for enhancing pointer visibility (or invisibility) are mildly useful under certain circumstances, but mostly, they're just for show. If you turn on "Display pointer trails," for example, you get ghost images that trail behind the cursor like a bunch of little ducklings following their mother. In general, this stuttering-cursor effect is irritating . On rare occasions, however, you may find that it helps locate the cursor if you're making a presentation on a low-contrast LCD projector. -
Hide pointer while typing is useful if you find that the cursor sometimes gets in the way of the words on your screen. As soon as you use the keyboard, the pointer disappears; just move the mouse to make the pointer reappear. -
Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key . If you've managed to lose the cursor on an LCD projector or a laptop with an inferior screen, this feature helps gain your bearings. When you press and release the Ctrl key after turning on this checkbox, Windows displays an animated concentric ring each subsequent time you press the Ctrl key to pinpoint the cursor's location.
Tip: You can also fatten up the insertion pointthe cursor that appears when you're editing text. See page 269.
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