[barmar]

I just upgraded Safari on my Mac to version 5.1 (this is the same version that's in the new Lion OS, but I'm still running Snow Leopard). Now, the mouse cursor keeps disappearing in the BBO web interface.

It happens whenever the cursor passes over one of the movable divider bars. While it's over the divider, it turns into the double-arrow. Then when it moves into either the playing area or the Who's Online/My Results area, it becomes invisible. It reappears when going into the chat area, when it turns into the I-beam. If I move it really quickly from there into one of the other areas, it stays an I-beam. This is better than invisible, but still not very nice for trying to click on bids or cards. I need to move the cursor completely out of the browser and back in to get it to turn into the normal pointer.

I installed the latest Flash Player, it didn't help.

I also tried Firefox and Chrome. Chrome works fine. In Firefox, the cursor never turns into an I-beam in the chat area, it stays an arrow. And when over the divider bars, the double-arrow appears UNDER the regular arrow cursor.

So for now, I'll use Chrome to access BBO.

[RedCat08]

barmar,

I am having the same sort of problem. I too just upgraded Safari on my Mac and am still running Snow Leopard. I only have an arrow for a short time and then the mouse cursor changes to either a vertical bar (sometimes purple, oddly enough) or it vanishes all together and the only way I know it is there is if it is my turn to play or bid and I finally get it over the correct card or box. I kept playing today but it was very nerve wracking. I am not good enough to troubleshoot what type of problem it is (Safari?, Flash? the combo?) so I came here to see if someone had the same difficulty and whether anybody out there could help.

RedCat08

[heyrocky]

Glad to know it's not just me. For what it's worth, Lion did not fix the problem; I upgraded the first day it was available, but saw this problem on both sides of the upgrade.

[Jacki]

Have you tried using Chrome which solved Barmar's problem? We're looking into this, but you might try Chrome and see if that works better in the meantime.

Jacki

[fred]

Thanks for reporting this problem. Working on it...

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Apparently this is a bug in either Safari or Flash which means we will have to wait for either Apple or Adobe to do something about it.

In the mean time, if you are not willing to use a different browser, it is possible to restore the normal mouse cursor by clicking on your desktop.

Sorry about this inconvenience, but it is unfortunately beyond our control to fix this problem.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

fred, on 2011-August-03, 07:03, said:

n the mean time, if you are not willing to use a different browser, it is possible to restore the normal mouse cursor by clicking on your desktop.

I figured that out when I first saw the problem, but it's not really a good solution. You click on the desktop, then move the mouse back into the browser window, and it passes over a divider line and disappears again. You'll drive yourself crazy. And if you're playing a Robot Reward, where every second counts, you can't afford to keep fixing the mouse cursor every few seconds.

Using another browser seems to be the only solution that's actually workable.

Have you reported the problem to Adobe? I think it would be best if it came from the application developer, since you can provide details of the API you're using that doesn't work properly. If someone like me were to report the problem, w wouldn't be able to provide useful details, just a description of the symptom in an application they've probably never heard of.

[fred]

barmar, on 2011-August-03, 17:32, said:

Have you reported the problem to Adobe? I think it would be best if it came from the application developer, since you can provide details of the API you're using that doesn't work properly. If someone like me were to report the problem, w wouldn't be able to provide useful details, just a description of the symptom in an application they've probably never heard of.

Adobe already knows about it. If you do a web search for something like "safari 5.1 flash mouse cursor" you will see what I mean.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

Several of the discussions I found mentioned that problems are with the debug version of Flash, not the normal user version. But maybe they're talking about the text input problem, not the cursor problem; these things seem to be mixed into the threads.

[BeaJa]

barmar, on 2011-August-04, 18:53, said:

Several of the discussions I found mentioned that problems are with the debug version of Flash, not the normal user version. But maybe they're talking about the text input problem, not the cursor problem; these things seem to be mixed into the threads.

I'm glad to learn it is just not me with this problem. If so, please share. I use Safari and OS X Snow Leopard. I do love my iMac, and would like to have this solved. Did you find a solution?

[barmar]

The solution is posted above: use a different browser -- Chrome or Firefox.

[BeaJa]

barmar, on 2011-August-14, 20:14, said:

The solution is posted above: use a different browser -- Chrome or Firefox.

Thank you. I downloaded Chrome, and it seems to have solved the cursor problem.

[BigNorm]

There are some serious problems with Safari 5.1 and Flash that need to be resolved. If you want to use Safari then the best solution is to go back to version 5.05. However, Apple does not make this task easy.
If you Google Safari 5.1 problems you will find information on how to reinstall version 5.05 of Safari.

Google Chrome and Firefox do not seem to have problems with BBO.

[barmar]

BigNorm, on 2011-September-09, 19:03, said:

Google Chrome and Firefox do not seem to have problems with BBO.

Thanks for the confirmation. I was worried that I'd imagined it when I posted that a month ago.

[barmar]

I just installed the Safari 5.1.1 update, and it looks like it fixes this problem.

But now I've gotten used to Chrome, so I think I'll stay with it.