Mouse interaction and custom cursor

Recently I've been working quite a bit with replacing the mouse cursor with custom graphics. And usually there are a lot of custom behaviour to it, similar to, play some animation when LMB is pressed, the custom cursor should be disabled while over a specific area (buttons). And last but not least, something specific should happen when user presses LMB inside a specific area for example attaching new movie clips while LMB is down etc.

In the above scenario, this is the best solution I've come up with this far. Imagine you have a "container" that encapsulates every movie clip that you will be using, you then listen to mouse-press and starts listening to enter-frame messages:

function init:
_container.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, onMouseDown);
_container.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEnterFrame);
_cursor.visible = true;
_cursor.startDrag(true);
Mouse.hide();

then inside the function onMouseDown (observe the stage-reference):

_isMouseDown = true;

_container.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, onMouseDown);

_container.stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, onMouseUp);

and inside the function onMouseUp

_isMouseDown = false;

_container.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, onMouseDown);

_container.stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, onMouseUp);

and finally the onEnterFrame-function, using a hitbox (subpart of "container" where the mouse-cursor should be replaced with custom-cursor) (if you are curious about the hitTestMouse-function please see my previous post):

{

if (hitTestMouse(_hitbox)) { 

    _cursor.visible = true;

    Mouse.hide();

} else { 

    _cursor.visible = false;

    Mouse.show();

    return; //outside of bounds

} 

if(_isMouseDown == false) { 

     return; 

}

/* depending on your solution, you could either create an awesome shape for hit test (_hitBox), or you could use a simple rectangle and then do more escape routes here in code with something similar to if(hitTestMouse(_button2)) useCustomCursor(false) and then return;

*/

//create and attach your custom movieclip here

var mc:MovieClip = new _eraserDef();

mc.x = _container.mouseX;

mc.y = _container.mouseY;

_container.foo.addChild(mc);

}

This will make it possible to replace mouse cursor with custom graphics while over a specific area (hitbox) and then restore regular cursor while hovering above buttons or outside hitbox and "place symbols" or "draw" while inside the hitbox. 

Don't remember to kill all event-listeners, stopdrag on _cursor, and to restore mouse when you're done with what you're gonna do.