Hide cursor in Chrome (and IE)

Question

I have the following CSS that hides the mouse cursor for anything on the web page. It works perfectly in FireFox but in IE and and Chrome it doesn't work.

    html {
        cursor: none;
    }

In Chrome I always see the mouse pointer. In IE however I see whatever cursor was last 'active' when it entered the screen. Presumably it's keeping the last selection instead of removing it.

Answer 1

This property cursor:none; isn't part of the standard

See here w3c cursor CSS properties.

You might want to look into hiding it with Javascript or JQuery.

Also, look at blank cursor files here.

And one last link to an ajax solution.

Chrome has had this issue since it was built, there have been reports sent to the people at Chromium, and I assume they are working on it.

Also, don't trust that anything would work in IE. Ever. :P

Answer 2

Since cursor can be given a url to use, could you use a url to a blank image?

Answer 3

According to this answer to an similar question, you need to set the height of your document to 100%, otherwise the page will still show the default cursor.

Anyway, it's still bad practise to hide the cursor from the user. You don't want to confuse the user into thinking their mouse device stopped working once they enter your page. Not sure why you would want to hide the cursor, but there are always more user-friendly solutions to what you are trying to achieve here. For instance, if you want to prevent the user from clicking on something, you could prevent the cursor to turning into a hand (* { cursor: pointer; }). If it's some Flash performance issue you are trying to solve, then hiding the cursor will not work, because the browser will still detect mouse movements.

Answer 4

Use a hidden applet with the java.awt.robot class to move the cursor off the sreen. Say the very lower left corner.

Answer 5

I had the same problem in these days and found a good solution to hide the pointer in Google Chrome.

This is the W3C definition of url property:

A comma separated of URLs to custom cursors. Note: Always specify a generic cursor at the end of the list, in case none of the URL-defined cursors can be used

So, you can define a url to not completely transparent image, followed by the default pointer:

cursor: url(img/almost_transparent.png), default;

If you choose a totally transparent png, Chrome will display a black rectangle instead, but if you choose a png with at least 1px not transparent it will work, and nobody will notice the pointer.