I've been to some sites lately which have some pretty fantastic cursors. You
probably know what I'm talking about - cursors that have little balls
dangling from them, look like a heart or consist of a string of letters
waving as if in the wind.

The first time I saw these cursors I thought, "that's pretty cool, I wonder
how they did that?" The answer was obvious since the cursor required the
download of a special Internet Explorer plug-in.

I see these cursors all over the place. I visit a lot of sites, and many of
them have some strange or not-so-strange cursors running. Some sites even
have a different cursor on each and every page!

What's the problem with this? Well, on a personal home page, nothing. In
fact, a nice, cute cursor on someone's page about his wife or dog is a great
touch, adding some special nicety which makes the pages stand out. A little
waving flag on someone's page about their Vietnam War experiences is great,
and a heart can make a romantic page really stand out.

But on a professional site these cursors tend to be, well, tacky. They turn
away visitors for a number of reasons. These don't matter that much on a
personal site - after all, most people create personal sites for the
satisfaction, not to make money or get a high hit count.

Professional sites are different. You want your visitors to stay and read
your message, comprehend your data or buy your products. Under these
circumstances it is critical that you do nothing to chase anyone away.

Some of the drawbacks of special cursors include the following.

1) Including special cursors requires the download of a plug-in. This has a
tendency to turn away visitors right away. People are afraid, rightly so, of
anything that pops up a security alert, and attempting to download an
ActiveX control will do exactly that.

2) Most of these animated cursors will only work on Windows and only in the
Internet Explorer browser (and often only the newer versions at that). This
limits the people who will enjoy the effect.

3) The cursor plug-ins tend to be resource hogs. By this I mean they use
memory and CPU time that could be better used by other functions of your
system. I have noticed definite performance issues when I examine web pages
using some of these cursor routines.

4) Special cursors are not looked upon favorably by professional webmasters.
You will find that many of the awards programs on the internet have special
clauses in the criteria which disallow sites with these cursors.

5) Too much moving data on the screen tends to be very annoying to visitors.
If you have a strange cursor and a few animated GIFs you are really pushing
your visitors tolerance to the limit.

6) The cursors get in the way of your message. As they move around, the
cursors cover text or graphics that you want your visitors to see.

7) The focus of the cursor is obscured by the animation. On the standard
cursor it is obvious where the cursor is pointing because it is an arrow or
bar. On a waving flag or a heart, it is not so obvious and tends to be
confusing. Confused visitors tend to hit the back button very fast.

8) Worst of all, these cursor plug-ins often act as spyware. What's that,
you ask? Spyware is a program which examines your surfing habits (among
other things) and reports it back to some location. What these free cursor
plug-ins really do is build up a history of usage and surfing patterns of
anyone who uses them. This information is then sold to advertisers.

9) In addition to recording the habits of web surfers, the cursors also
record the hits to web sites which use that technology. This allows the
cursor companies to gather even more data which can, in theory at least, be
sold to advertisers.

For these reasons, my recommendation is to simply avoid strange cursors on
all but personal home pages.

About the Author
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This
website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet
profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
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