90213 - Specific mousepointer when hovering mouse over a mailto: link

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen]

A small but nice enhancement.

Currently when you hover over any link the mousepointer changes to a hand.

It could change more specific type of pointer depending on what type of link it was.
It could be news:, ftp:, gopher: or whatever type you want a specific pointer for.
Too much is overkill though and ruins simplicity.
I can only see one useful linktype ... mailto:


It would be nice that when you hovered you mouse over a mail link , the
mousepointer would change into a the same link hang as normal but with a little
letter in the upper right corner.

Something like the little lettericon in the lower left corner of the browser.

Comment 1

[Chris Petersen]

Confirming enhancement.

Comment 2

[anthonyd]

not table specific, reassigning to core owner.

Comment 3

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

Um. This really needs an icon to go in whatever place we put non-theme-specific
icons first; then it could presumably be added by a simple alteration to
html.css. Transferring to UI.

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

This would probably depend on bug 38447 "Implement Handling of URI Values on
CSS2 "cursor" Properties"

Comment 5

[timeless]

.

Comment 6

[Gérard Talbot]

An MSIE add-on uses an envelop icon cursor for "mailto:" links: 
http://www.draig.de/LinkBar/
I think this is a nice and welcomed enhancement which also compensates a web
design mistake spotted by J. Nielsen:
10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html

Comment 7

[Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen]

Thanks for pointing it out :)
It makes a little proud that I saw a webproblem before "the king of usability"
Jakob Nielsen did.

I have added the URL to LinkBar as this bugs showcase URL.

Comment 8

[Gérard Talbot]

Testcase for this bug:
http://www10.brinkster.com/doctorunclear/Bugzilla/MetaDemoPageCursors.html
When viewing with MSIE 6, one can see the customized cursor, otherwise an
equivalent image shows it.

Comment 9

[Sergey Sokoloff]

adding bug 38447 as a dependence, according to comment 4, it seems reasonable

Comment 10

[Sergey Sokoloff]

...now adding as a dependence (I've mismatched the field, sorry).

Comment 11

[Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen]

Now that official development for Seamonkey is gone shouldn't this be retargeted
for Firefox ?

Also since bug 38447 is now FIXED the road should be clear to implement this
feature.

Comment 12

[Gérard Talbot]

Christian,
The current problem (the reason invoked which stops fixing this bug and others)
with fixing this bug (and other similar: bug 169678, bug 246481) is that custom
cursors could mislead users, could deceive users, could be used to mislead
users: no hint is better than abused hinting. See bug 169678#c27 
We all know there is already a lot of deception, misleading, misrepresentation,
usurpation, carefully crafted deceiving going on on the web these days. 

OTOH, there is nothing preventing you from using custom cursors and coding your
userContent.css file accordingly (1)... or even generating content with :after
for special links (2). Adding a custom image after a "mailto:" link is also more
useful, reliable (from the user's perspective) than a dynamic change of the
cursor, IMO.

(1):
a[href^="mailto:"]:not([onclick]) {cursor: url("Your_Custom_Mailto_Cursor.cur")
!important, auto;}

(2)
a[href^="mailto:"]:not([onclick]):after {content:
url("Your_Custom_Mailto_Image.gif");}

Comment 13

[Gérard Talbot]

Testcase for this bug now at:
http://www.gtalbot.org/BugzillaSection/MetaDemoPageCursors.html

Comment 14

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter "spam" on "guifeatures-nobody-20080610".