Bubbles

Bubbles makes the mouse pointer blow soap bubbles. They appear around the pointer, float upward, sway gently as they rise and drift with the way you were moving, then pop with a small bright flash.

How it works

Each bubble is drawn like a real soap film: almost clear in the middle and coloured at the rim, where the light runs through a rainbow of thin-film colours that slowly shift, with a small white highlight near the top. Bubbles come in a range of sizes, each lives for a slightly different time, and each wobbles on its own rhythm. Near the end of its life a bubble swells, flashes and vanishes. They keep coming at half the rate when the pointer rests. Unlike the glowing cursors, they are see-through film rather than added light, so they read on light backgrounds too.

Settings

• Spawn rate: how many bubbles appear per second.
• Float speed: how fast they rise.
• Lifetime (ms): how long a bubble lives before it pops, which sets how high the stream climbs.
• Iridescence: 0 gives plain bubbles in your colour, 1 gives the full rainbow film.
• Color: the base colour of the film.

Use it for

Children's sites, playful and beauty brands, water themes. The same bubbles as a scene object are the Bubbles effect, and a trail of them behind a moving object is the Bubble trail. For glitter instead, see Magic Sparkles.