Forget tacky loading spinners, just use a wait cursor

Nice idea, but I disagree that this should make us "Forget tacky loading spinners". Loading spinners are a big step forward from wait cursors in that they:<p>- Can be used to show <i>what</i> is loading, especially if you use AJAX to update only part of the screen/content, rather than indicate a global loading state.<p>- Work on devices that do not have a cursor. Touch anyone?<p>- Don't make you feel like you are running Windows 3.1<p>- Don't make you fear your browser/system has frozen.

One issue I have with this is that due to the commonality of spinners, I associate the wait cursor with waiting on the browser (memory issue, temporary CPU spike, large js script running) rather than an waiting on the results of an ajax request.<p>For me at least, using this technique would probably cause me to perceive the site as being slower or more resource intensive than it truly is.

I just clicked on your demo and my brain instantly though, oh crap my browsers crashed again. Even though I knew it was going to change the cursor to a wait button.

Did this (using jquery):<p>var loadingLayer = { step: 0, add: function(){ this.step += 1; //didn't know how to call checkState() automatically after any other call this.checkState(); }, remove: function(){ this.step -= 1; this.step &#60; 0 &#38;&#38; (this.step=0); this.checkState(); }, clear: function(){ this.step = 0; this.checkState(); }, checkState: function(){ if (this.step === 0){ $("body").removeClass("loading"); } else { $("body").addClass("loading"); } } }; $(document).ajaxStart( function(){ loadingLayer.add(); }); $(document).ajaxComplete(function(){ loadingLayer.remove(); });<p>I know the JS is uggly but i'm not an js expert (it works).

I vastly prefer loading spinners over wait cursors.<p>A wait cursor usually represents some form of synchronous wait to the entire application. If I get the wait cursor in a native application, there's a good chance that I'll need to wait for it to finish before I can continue my work flow.<p>A loading spinner is often more asynchronous and targeted. If I click the preview button in GitHub, then only that element is being loaded, and it doesn't stop or slow down any other part of the UI.<p>A good UI should be asynchronous; ideally there shouldn't be any operation that locks or slows down the UI. If an expensive operation is taking place, place a busy notifier on the affected elements. Having a wait cursor for the whole application or window seems an anachronism.

No cursors on mobile. So.

There's no cursor for mobile devices so whatever you think works only works for a percentage of users.

Because browser wait cursors tend to make me instinctively cmd-w or cmd-q<p>(close tab or close application for you non macheads)