CEP extension: change cursor in app

Report · Aug 15, 2018

It seems this would be a common requirement, but other than this brief mention:

CEP-Resources/CEP 8.0 HTML Extension Cookbook.md at master · Adobe-CEP/CEP-Resources · GitHub

I find no information about if (and how!) to change the cursor in the host application from my CEP extension.

Use case:

User drags & drops content from my extension into InDesign layout.
This triggers a long running action (e.g. a download of said content)
I would like to have the UI indicate that this could time a while (e.g. hour glass cursor or similar).

Otherwise, the impression is that the action did not work (it did, but it takes a moment!)

Thanks for any advice.

Report · Aug 15, 2018

You just set the css cursor | CSS-Tricks

<body>
    <div style="cursor: pointer;">Hello Pointer</div>
    <div class="no-drop">Hello No Drop</div>
    <div>Hello Wait</div>
</body>

body {
    cursor: pointer;
}
.no-drop {
    cursor: no-drop;
}

Report · Aug 15, 2018

Thank you for your reply!

Yes, we are doing this (or something similar) in the add-on. But AFAICT this only changes the cursor in the extension.

The cursor in InDesign remains the same. I was wondering if it is possible to change that cursor as well?

I think we might do something like discussed here:

HTML5 Opening a Modal Dialog from Extension?

That is, open a "please wait..." blocking modal as another extension while the action is being processed, then send an event to it when the action is complete.