How do I make a custom system wide mouse cursor animation?

Question

I write software for the disabled. One of the problems is difficulty tracking the mouse pointer. I want to have the mouse cursor glow (or similar effect. Maybe water like ripples around it) when the user needs to locate it. How is this done? I know it's possible because it's used in a variety of software.

Answer 1

Have a look at Realworld Cursor Editor found here.

Edit: As the OP pointed out, the OP was looking for a way of creating an animated cursor programmatically, using Win32API. AFAIK it cannot be done or is long-winded way of doing it, the 'LoadCursor' function can load the cursor from an embedded resource or a file on disk with an extension .ani, hence my answer in support for the usage of Realworld Cursor Editor which can create an .ani file containing animated cursors, the other way of doing it is to use the 'Control Panel' > 'Mouse', click on 'Pointers' tab-page on the dialog itself to set it as system-wide settings. Here is a sample of how an animated cursor gets loaded here.

Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.