The Curse of Cursors - Part II

One of the advantages of producing a LOT of online webinars, AGMs, conferences and the like, is that I get to work with dozens of presenters, and it's surprising how few think of their cursors, and the curses they generate amongst audience members.

The abuse comes in several flavours:

The Flyspeck - This tiny cursor that looks fine on your laptop's high definition screen, but by the time it gets through screen sharing and video compression and so on, it's nearly invisible. Make it BIG. Really BIG. We thank you.

Nervous Nelly - The seemingly random cursor that flies here, then there, scrolls a little up, scrolls a little (or a lot) down, slightly nauseating, completely distracting. I'd slap your hand off the mouse if I could.

Fast 'n' Furious - This is the ten-kilo presentation jammed into a two-kilo bag, so we're only going to finish on time if we talk and move really fast. This also leads to the fast moving cursor, usually tiny, that knows exactly where it's going and by the time you find where it landed, it's already off to another where and more fast talk. Really helpful if it's a technical presentations with highly complex slides or software screens. The good thing is it finished on time. Too bad nobody can remember any of the details.

Lost in Space - This is the cursor that's not supposed to be visible during screen sharing, but it is anyway. It usually wanders here, then there. Not in a hurry. Not really going anywhere. Just a handy distraction.

In Summary: If you're going to share your screen, and it has more than one simple idea on screen at a time, YOU NEED TO SHOW ME WHERE TO LO0K.

Take your time. Make your cursor visible (when it's supposed to be) and invisible (when it's supposed to be).

Thank you.

PS - You might be interested in an earlier post about cursors in Zoom meetings: The Curse of the (Tiny) Cursor - Part I