At work, I have a dual-monitor setup: a 19″ Dell monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio in portrait mode and a 22″ Samsung widescreen monitor in landscape mode. I often lose the cursor when moving between monitors, generally when moving to the Samsung because it’s higher resolution and there’s a gap of a few inches between the monitors. Being nearsighted doesn’t help – even though I use a larger than normal cursor, I still lose it occasionally.
Last week I was watching a WebWorks ePublisher webinar and noticed something interesting – the cursor had a large yellow circle around it, which greatly increased its visibility. I queried the presenter, Ben Allums, and he pointed me to PenAttention (for tablets) and CursorAttention (for PCs). I immediately downloaded and installed CursorAttention and it’s made life much easier for me. You can adjust the colour of the circle (or a rectangle if you want that), its opacity, and size, and easily turn it on or off. And it’s free.
I think it’s intended for people who are doing presentations, but it should word for anyone who has trouble locating the mouse cursor onscreen.
Thanks again to Ben Allums for pointing this out.