The point of distraction
January 24th, 2008 by 
Phil
It turns out that I hate having the mouse cursor visible in my working window. I didn’t really know about this until I used a colleague’s dual-monitor machine. He has set the window focus to follow the pointer and I consistently selected the window I wanted to type in and one whoosh of the mouse later was happily typing code into Firefox.
It turns out that this doesn’t really work :)
After I went back to my machine I tried to pay attention to what I was doing with the mouse after I’ve selected a window, and I do indeed almost always give it a quick flick left or right and take the pointer to the edge of the screen where it’s out of my way.
So it means I’m glad to find out about unclutter (via Erik), a small Linux application for hiding the mouse pointer after a customised period of delay. Much nicer!
Tagged: linux | 
OS X hides the mouse pointer when you start typing.
I thought Windows did too no?
Posted by Gareth on January 25th, 2008 at 1:25 amNot in XP at least. I don’t think so on Vista either (I’ll check when I get home).
Posted by Phil on January 25th, 2008 at 10:32 amGlad you found that post useful! It fits with my view that the machine should never get in the way of getting things done.
Posted by Erik on January 30th, 2008 at 7:11 pmIt’s amazing
Posted by ensurleseede on August 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm