AS3 wait/busy cursor?

Question

In as3, how do you change the cursor to the systems default busy/wait cursor (e.g. the spinning wheel on a mac)?

Answer 1

It seems as if Flash does not support the wait/busy cursor by default, but it does support:

flash.ui.MouseCursor.AUTO         Automatic based on the object under the mouse. flash.ui.MouseCursor.ARROW     Mouse cursor will be an arrow. flash.ui.MouseCursor.BUTTON    Mouse cursor will be a button clicking hand. flash.ui.MouseCursor.HAND         Mouse cursor will be a dragging hand.
flash.ui.MouseCursor.IBEAM        Mouse cursor will be an I-beam.

As seen here. You could make your own though, by creating a sprite and having it follow the mouse.

Answer 2

I would suggest looking for an alternative solution. For one, the spinning wheel on the Mac is actually an indication from the OS that the user interface is not responding and has failed to process system events for a period of time. This usually occurs when an application performs some heavy computation in the main thread and is unable to process events timely (the application is not actually requesting this cursor).

Perhaps you can find a solution that communicates loading in a way that is intrinsic to Flash -- if I saw the spinning wheel, I would think that my browser was not responding.