Pen Pointers

For pen tablets, as with a mouse, pointers play an important part in visually indicating the user's location of interaction on the screen. When the input surface is actually a screen display, pointers may seem superfluous; however, they still have an important role to play. Pointers help the pen user select small targets faster. Moreover, changes from one pointer to another provide useful feedback about the actions supported by the object under the pen. For example, when the pen moves over a resizable border, the pointer can change from a pen (indicating that writing is possible) to a resizing pointer (indicating that the border can be dragged to resize the object). Whenever possible, include this type of feedback in pen-enabled applications to help users understand the kinds of supported actions.

Following are two common pointers used with the pen.

Table 4.2 Pen Pointers

When the screen is the input surface — because a pointer may be partially obscured by the pen or by the user's hand — you may need to consider including additional forms of feedback, such as toolbar button states or status bar information, to indicate the pen's input state.