GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 108040
No recommended usage of busy-interactive cursor
Last modified: 2021-07-05 10:53:19 UTC
The HIG says "Use a busy pointer whenever users are blocked from interaction with your application for 1 second or longer." But the HIG doesn't say what to do with input isn't blocked. I think it should. It defines a "busy-interactive pointer", but doesn't say when to use one. For example, try visiting /usr/lib in nautilus. Input isn't blocked, and there isn't a busy cursor. But I think that a busy-interactive cursor would still be useful. I'd like the HIG to take a stance on issues like these.
I think a throbbing ProgressBar would be more appropriate. I can't think of any app on Windows, Mac, or GNOME that changes the mouse cursor to a busy-cursor while still allowing the mouse cursor to be used.
I've certainly seen it on Windows (it's one of the standard pointer types), but I forget in which apps exactly, I'd need to go and play... I think Windows Explorer uses it while it's generating all the image thumbnails in a directory though, for example, since you can still manipulate the files in the meantime.
Murray: not busy-cursor, but busy-interactive-cursor. I'm talking about the cursor with an hour AND an hourglass, not just the hourglass. Also, let me clarify what I meant a little: I think the HIG should say something like "if the app is working on giving results back to the user, but input is not blocked (ie., because the app lets the user work on the data as it is being created) it should display a busy-interactive cursor."
Do we even have such a "busy-interactive-cursor" cursor?
I don't think so, but perhaps we should consider getting one...
I filed a GTK+ enhancement bug about that and made this bug dependent on it.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-devel-docs/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.