Author: Zafir Anjum

Given a component you can use setCursor to change the cursor. E.g.

((Component)comp).setCursor(Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Frame.WAIT_CURSOR));

This will cause the mouse cursor to change to the wait cursor whenever it is over the component but not outside of it. To change the cursor for the entire frame, you might think that the following would work ...

frame.setCursor(Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Frame.WAIT_CURSOR));

Unfortunately it doesn't. You actually have to do three things, to make this happen.

1. Change the cursor for the glass pane.
2. Make the glass pane visible.
3. Add a mouse listener

frame.getGlassPane().addMouseListener( new MouseAdapter() {});
frame.getGlassPane().setCursor(Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Cursor.WAIT_CURSOR));
frame.getGlassPane().setVisible(true);

Note that while the glass pane is visible, none of the controls in the frame receive mouse message, they do however receive keyboard events.

To remove the wait cursor, simply set the visibility flag of the glass pane to false.

Also, note that simply calling setCursor() doesn't actually change the cursor. The change is delayed till the next mouse click or movement.

Check out the bug 4160474 in the Java Developer Connection. It covers this problem and has apparently been fixed.

Posted On: 20-Jan-1999

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