Changing the Mouse Cursor with Flash 5 - Page 9

The Downsides

But, as I said before, there are some downsides on using this technique.

The first one: the mouse cursor sampling rate. You'll note that your cursor may be a bit "slow", not following your mouse movements accurately. This is due to Flash's default frame rate, of 12 fps (frames per second). Fortunatelly, you can easily change this by selecting the menu Modify > Movie (or simply CTRL+M). Increasing the frame rate to, say, 20fps (see image) will make the cursor much more accurate, although it will also make your movie play faster.

The other downside is that, by making an object follow the cursor ("startDrag"), you are limiting your mouseactions - you can not make it drag another object, since Flash only allows one object to be dragged at a time.

But, overall, this routine can be very helpful if you will use standard buttons and navigation within your Flash movie, and wants to add a little spice to your interface. Just insert a layer with that two frame actions and the cursor symbol, and voilá - a custom cursor at your service.