What are examples of legitimate use-cases for supporting custom cursors? If you're considering using a custom cursors, keep in mind that not all users keep the normal cursor size. At least on macOS, you can increase the size from the Accessibility panel.
Hopefully the web can start providing access to more built-in accessibility features. One such feature that was added recently is Reduced Motion Media Query [1]. Wouldn't it be great to have a media query for "Increase contrast"? I can't be the only one that's occasionally frustrated from websites that mix 50 shades of barely readable gray.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ap...
[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Gen...
We build web applications serving expert users for which this is essential. For precise selection the default cursor often occludes important information. Think of how confusing something like Photoshop, AutoCAD or Maya would be without contextual cursors.
It would be sensible, however, to place behind a permission in the same way as location or notification APIs. Unfortunately most browsers' UX for permissions is awful.
The worst UX being when they don't ask at all for things that really should be asked for, like javascript.
Kidding, of course. But damn I loved that sort of thing back when. Especially being able to do it with weird plugins as a fledgling "webmaster".
Probably special cursors that indicate a different type of action that can be performed; like the hand-shaped pointer you get when hovering over a button or the various resize arrows, but custom. A tipped paint bucket for example on a website presenting a drawing application.
See by comparison this hack I made a few months ago [1], which uses a dynamic CSS cursor image (drawn in JS). The interesting thing it shows is that CSS cursors can escape the viewport, leading to possible security issues.
It's quite convincing otherwise, and that's very frightening. :)
I like how it seems to work like a vector field
OSX non retina
I was sick of people following their long stale bookmarks and needed to establish the new link.
