Known Issues
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The contents of the Pointing Magnifier's lens are not "live," but just a scrape of screen pixels. If the lens is deployed on an
animation (e.g., a video), the lens contents will not continue to animate while magnified. Similarly, if the mouse pointer inside the lens
moves over an element that should change the pointer's shape (e.g., a window's resize border), the mouse pointer will not change.
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The Pointing Magnifier cannot trigger mouse movement-based events—mouse over, mouse hover, mouse enter, or mouse leave. Certain
features, like ToolTips, that require such signals will not respond to the Pointing Magnifier area cursor for these events. A remedy is to
use the "suppress" key, which by default is the Control key, to temporarily hide the circular
cursor and reveal your regular mouse pointer.
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The Pointing Magnifier will generally draw behind menus because menus capture the mouse in order to operate. Thus, the Pointing
Magnifier will not provide a magnification advantage for clicking on menu items. But the experience is no worse than using the regular
mouse cursor.
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The Windows Start Menu is itself a (large) menu, and unfortunately will show on top of the Pointing Magnifier cursor. Fortunately, the regular
mouse pointer still works fine on the Start Menu.
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The Microsoft Ribbon at the top of File Explorer windows and other application windows is also a menu when it is not pinned. When it
is unpinned and then opened, it will draw over the Pointing Magnifier cursor. If it is pinned to its window (recommended), then the Pointing
Magnifier will operate above it, just as it should.
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Due to its modal nature, the Pointing Magnifier's system menu, which opens at the top-left corner of its settings window with a click or by
typing Alt+Space, requires the Pointing Magnifier cursor to be temporarily hidden. It will show again automatically when the system menu closes.
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If the Pointing Magnifier cursor is active when the Windows Task Manager is opened, the Pointing Magnifier cursor will freeze as long as the
Task Manager window has focus. The regular mouse pointer can still be used to control the Task Manager.
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Similarly, if the Pointing Magnifier area cursor is active when the user goes to take a screen shot with
Windows Key+Shift+S, the area cursor will freeze while the screen shot application is being used.
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The Pointing Magnifier has not been tested in conjunction with other third-party accessibility software. Combinations of such software with
the Pointing Magnifier might produce unexpected or undesirable results.
Go to Pointing Magnifier 3 home page
Copyright © 2011-2022 Jacob O. Wobbrock. All rights reserved.
Last updated October 3, 2022.