How To Change the Mouse Pointer to Any .CUR or .ANI File

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 3.0, 5.0

SUMMARY

The ability to change the mouse pointer to a cursor file other than one of the default system cursors is available to Visual FoxPro through the Windows API. This feature set is available under both Windows 95 and Windows NT.

Visual FoxPro allows you to change the MousePointer property to specify one of the pointer shape available in the default 12 system pointers, and the DragIcon property allows you to set the pointer to any monochrome .cur file. However, in some cases, you might want a colored pointer or an animated pointer (.ani file). You can use the Windows API to do this.

The example in this article shows a method using LoadCursorFromFile() and SetSystemCursor(). There are other functions that may be useful as well such as CopyIcon(), ClipCursor(), GetCursor(), and so on. See the Win32api.hlp file for more information on these functions.

MORE INFORMATION

The following code demonstrates a form with two command buttons. The upper button changes the pointer to an animated cursor and the lower button resets the pointer to the original cursor. The sample code is designed to run under Windows NT. It requires slight modification to run under Windows 95; instructions are given in comments.

Sample Code

PUBLIC oform1

oform1=CREATEOBJECT("form1") oform1.Show() RETURN

DEFINE CLASS form1 AS form

     Caption = "Form1"
     Name = "Form1"

     ADD OBJECT command1 AS commandbutton WITH ;
          Top = 72, ;
          Left = 96, ;
          Height = 29, ;
          Width = 94, ;
          Caption = "SetCursor", ;
          Name = "Command1"

     ADD OBJECT command2 AS commandbutton WITH ;
          Top = 144, ;
          Left = 96, ;
          Height = 29, ;
          Width = 94, ;
          Caption = "ResetCursor", ;
          Name = "Command2"

     PROCEDURE Init
          public currenthcurs,tempcurs,newhcurs,OCR_NORMAL
          OCR_NORMAL=32512  &&from winuser.h
     ENDPROC

     PROCEDURE command1.Click
          MyDir=space(255)
          declare Integer GetWindowsDirectory in Win32Api String @, Integer
          declare Integer CopyIcon in Win32Api Integer
          declare Integer LoadCursorFromFile in Win32Api String
          declare Integer SetCursor in Win32Api Integer
          declare SetSystemCursor in Win32Api Integer, Integer
          declare Integer GetCursor in Win32Api

          currenthcurs=GetCursor()
          tempcurs=CopyIcon(currenthcurs)
          len=GetWindowsDirectory(@MyDir,255)
          MyDir=left(MyDir,len)+"\System32\dinosaur.ani"  && WindowsNT

*         MyDir=left(MyDir,len)+"\cursors\dinosaur.ani"  && Windows95
          newhcurs=LoadCursorFromFile(MyDir)
          =SetSystemCursor(newhcurs,OCR_NORMAL)
     ENDPROC

     PROCEDURE command2.Click
          =SetSystemCursor(tempcurs,OCR_NORMAL)
     ENDPROC

REFERENCES

For more details, you can find a reference to these cursor functions in the Win32Api.hlp Help file and in the Win32 SDK. The creation of cursor files is supported by Imagedit.exe, and the Windows NT utility Aniedit.exe can be used to create animated cursors.