10.4: Watch zoomed-in video without the mouse pointer

Apr 18, '07 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: edified

I've always used the handy Control-scroll zoom feature to zoom in on videos or Flash animations that are embeded in web pages. I think I solved my last complaint about this process, the lingering cursor, today. This is how I view videos full screen on the web:

  1. Set up zoom preferences in the Universal Access System Preferences pane. Under Options, I prefer "only when the pointer reaches an edge," but it's worth trying out all the options.
  2. Load up a video on a web page and hit play.
  3. Click in the Search Box field or the Address Field or your chosen browser (you'll see...)
  4. Zoom in via Control-zoom and center. Now it's looking good, except for that pesky mouse cursor!
  5. Type a key on your keyboard; I like the up arrow. This hides the cursor.
Now watch your video fullscreen without the annoying mouse cursor. Steps three and five let you hide the mouse cursor without any third party software. The Mac OS hides the cursor any time you start typing, so it doesn't get in the way. You can type any key, but I prefer the arrows because they don't input anything into the text box and they're an easy target.

One other option to hide the cursor is to use Tab to get to an obscured text field then type something. Enjoy!

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070414214954493