You have an element like this: Īnd you toss a background on it. Let’s say you wanted to move the background-position on an element as you mouse over it to give the design a little pizzazz. We can point the cursor property to an image like this.

What about custom cursors, you ask? As in, an image of your own creation tha takes the place of a cursor. Using a Custom Cursor to Enhance an Element See the Pen The Cursors! by Chris Coyier ( on CodePen. In the latest trend, most of the side uses a custom animated cursor to emphasize the components like navigation, buttons, links, cat, etc Let's create the Cursor/Pointer markup. Here’s a demo of everything currently available: The beautiful cursor and hover animation will change the look of your web page. Always take the opportunity to match an element’s cursor to its behavior when the default arrow isn’t enough of a clue. Matt Nikonorov OctoIn this article, you’ll learn how to make your website’s text dynamic and more engaging using typewriter effects in pure CSS. The same is true for any number of scenarios, whether we’re talking about form inputs, images, or just about anything else you can imagine. See the Pen QNqMRp by Geoff Graham ( on CodePen. Update Function: We haven’t coded this yet but its goal will be to update the 3D rotation of our inner div. Adding cursor: move to the element would help solve that. We want to decide what happens when the cursor enters, moves over, and leaves the container, so each of those has a handler. We can apply that to an element and it will allow a user to click and drag that element around the viewport, but the user never know that if the cursor remains in its default state. In these cases, we ought to change the cursor to something that reflects the expected user interaction on that element. There are some times where the default cursor behavior from the User Agent Stylesheet doesn’t cut it. Hover over the link and the cursor changes from the default black arrow to a hand with its index finger extended, otherwise known as a pointer. That’s a solid visual indicator that the hyperlinked text is clickable.īrowsers take it a bit further. Even if we do nothing else in our CSS, links will have color: blue and text-decoration: underline. Some cursor changes are built into the User Agent Stylesheet. In this post I’ll cover two ways I think controlling the cursor in CSS can improve user experience. Remember when we learned ::selection was a thing and every site started using it to personalize the background color of text selections? Customizing cursors is just as easy and adds that extra bit of understated flourish when used correctly. Still, it’s easy to overlook cursors and their impact on the user experience of our sites. There are a ton of options available to us and we’ve covered them pretty thoroughly in the ol’ Almanac here on CSS-Tricks. CSS can control the appearance of a cursor.

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