Cursor Highlight for Online Presentations

Aug
30
2020
3
min read
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By KF Cheng
Cursor Highlight for Online Presentations

Cursor Highlight for Online Presentations

While online activities are becoming more and more popular, have you noticed that you audience may get lost because it is difficult  to follow your mouse movement around the screen?  In particular, if you are doing screen recording, the result of the video output is much different.

 

Here are 2 recommendations you can deal with this situation if you want to make an improvement:

  1. Modify the Mouse settings under Windows 10 - no additional software or apps is needed.  There are already a number of choices available, but there is none with a halo highlighter.  However, the little cursor is actually a small icon image, which can be customized easily.
  2. Install a Cursor Highlighter - you need to install the necessary small programs under Windows, but it is free of charge.

One biggest difference between the two is that, (1) is a permanent change, that means the configuration will stay unless you go into the configuration and make changes again.  (2) however is switchable.  That means 2 modes of operations are available, and users can switch between the modes under different situations in a more flexible manner.

The following video I found on YouTube introduced this 2 methods.  Below it are the written installation and operation procedures with hyperlinks for online tools and downloads are also available.

 

 

Changing Cursor Size & Thickness

  1. Click on the little Windows logo on the lower left hand corner of your Windows 10 screen
     
     
  2. Click on the left-most vertical icon of Control Panel and enter the Control Panel Settings Window
  3. Click on Devices icon
  4. Select Mouse on the left menu
  5. Click on the  Adjust  mouse & cursor size link and enter another Cursor & Pointer window
    • Under Change pointer size you can change the size of the mouse cursor
       
       
    • Under Change pointer color you can change the color of the cursor by first selecting the cursor appearance, followed by selecting the color
       
       
    • Under Change cursor thickness you can change the thickness of the mouse cursor to make it easier to see during typing
       
       

 
 
 

 

Download Your Own Cursor

This RealWorld Graphics offers free web and application graphics resources online.  Users can either choose the cursor images they like, or create a new one of his own online.  Following is the procedure.  Refer to the YouTube video (starting 5:03) for details:

Open the Cursor Library http://www.rw-designer.com/cursor-library
- type in keywords for searching specific e.g. highlight
- download the set of cursors of interests It will be a .cur file, contain the entire set of cursors
- place this file together with other files c:\Windows\cursors  this is where all the .cur files are placed
Windows will ask for administrator permission, and go ahead
- open the cursor file

Click on this .cur file, and Windows will open it up under Mouse Properties.  If not, open it manually by:

  1. Go to Control Panel > Devices > Mouse > Additional mouse options > Pointers
  2. Click on Browse and select the downloaded cursor file
- save as a new scheme select Save As and enter an appropriate scheme name

After this, users can just select different schemes, or switch it back to the original.

 

Creating Your Own Cursor

RealWorld Graphics also have a RealWorld Cursor Editor available which can be downloaded.  Download this editor and create your own cursor accordingly.

On the same download page at the bottom, there are some videos available for you to learn how to use the editor.

 

 

A small program in the form of script under the AutoHotKey open-source scripting language for Windows environment, was developed by Prof. Luc Boisvert and open for download.

Installation

  1. Install the free AutoHotKey first, which is abbreviated as AHK:
    • Go to the AHK website, click on the green Download button.
    • Select the version to download, normally the Current Version
    • Install it
  2. Download the AHK script for the Cursor Highlighter
  3. After installation, go to where it was downloaded, and click on the downloaded file.  It is likely having the filename Cursor Highlighter 2.2.ahk.
  4. It will ask whether you want to create a new default settings file.  Answer yes.
  5. Done.  We can move on to the configuration settings.

 

Configuration Settings

  1. On the lower right hand cover where the Windows system tray is, the Cursor Highlighter icon should be available.  Right-Click on the icon and this following dialog will pop out:
     
    Cursor Highlighter Setting
  2. Select Settings and enter the General tab initially
     
    Cursor Highlighter General Setting
  3. Click Highlight settings on the left.  It is fine to follow below setting to start with.
     
    Highlight Settings
  4. Select Highlight: left-click on the left, and configure the display you want when you left-click the mouse.  The author has set a smaller highlighter with different color:
     
    Highlight left-click setting
  5. Click on Highlight: right-click on the left, and configure the settings accordingly.  Similar strategy was made by the author with a different color.Highlight right-click setting

     

  6. Click on Hotkeys on the left and make your choice accordingly.  The author has chosen Ctl-Ctrl-c but in your computer it might be conflict with other software.Hotkey setting

     

  7. There are other settings which will be left for users to explore on his own.

 

For details, refer to the YouTube video (starting 8:15)