Lock mouse cursor while dragging in Chrome

Question

This isn't the same question as all the others. I'm already preventing Chrome from entering text selection mode while dragging. (Edit: I only want to lock the icon/appearance, not restrict location or movement, and only between mousedown and mouseup) The issue I would like to avoid is that Chrome changes the cursor while dragging, to whatever is under the cursor (i.e.-i-beam while over text input control, hand while over hyperlink, etc).

IE and FireFox/Moz support element.setCapture() which I call in the mousedown event, that "locks" those browsers to the element so that the mouse cursor stays to whatever the cursor of that element is.. very nice. Chrome does not support that function, or anything like it, that I know of.

By watching mousemove and mouseup events on the document object instead of the element that was clicked, I'm able to still get most of the setCapture() behavior, in that I can track mouse events that happen outside of the element, and even outside the browser window. However, I'm left with one issue still, the mouse cursor changing in Chrome.

Answer 1

I believe you're looking for the Pointer Control Lock API, a recently introduced way for users to control the user's input device (when allowed). The big use case is gaming.

Without a secure and supported API, allowing sites to take over user input controls would be pretty disastrous (i.e. clickjacking and forced malware downloads), so if you're looking to "lock" the cursor then this is likely to be your only option.