Change the mouse pointer using JavaScript

Javascript is pretty good at manipulating css.

 document.body.style.cursor = *cursor-url*;
 //OR
 var elementToChange = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
 elementToChange.style.cursor = "url('cursor url with protocol'), auto";

or with jquery:

$("html").css("cursor: url('cursor url with protocol'), auto");

Firefox will not work unless you specify a default cursor after the imaged one!

other cursor keywords

Also remember that IE6 only supports .cur and .ani cursors.

If cursor doesn't change: In case you are moving the element under the cursor relative to the cursor position (e.g. element dragging) you have to force a redraw on the element:

// in plain js
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').style.display = 'block';
// in jquery
$('#parentOfElementToBeRedrawn').hide().show(0);

working sample:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>First jQuery-Enabled Page</title>
<style type="text/css">

div {
    height: 100px;
    width: 1000px;
    background-color: red;
}

</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.js"></script></head>
<body>
<div>
hello with a fancy cursor!
</div>
</body>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].style.cursor = "url('http://wiki-devel.sugarlabs.org/images/e/e2/Arrow.cur'), auto";


</script>
</html>


document.body.style.cursor = 'cursorurl';

Look at this page: http://www.webcodingtech.com/javascript/change-cursor.php. Looks like you can access cursor off of style. This page shows it being done with the entire page, but I'm sure a child element would work just as well.

document.body.style.cursor = 'wait';

Tags:

Javascript

Cursor

Custom Cursor

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