pointer-trail-emitter

Emit particles by distance travelled instead of on a timer: accumulate the pointer's movement each frame and spawn one mote every fixed step of distance. Place each mote at its owed position along the segment so a fast flick lays a continuous ribbon rather than scattered dots.

Timer-based emission spawns particles at fixed time intervals, so spacing equals pointer speed times interval. A fast flick covers too much distance between spawns and the line scatters. Distance-based emission fixes spacing along the path regardless of speed.

Yes. The bundled demo uses dependency-free Vanilla JavaScript with the Canvas 2D API, drawing a cached radial-gradient sprite with additive compositing. CSS styles only the interface, and no shaders, WebGL, or runtime dependencies are required.

Add a rare idle emission on a timer, roughly one mote every 0.4 seconds, since distance emission produces nothing for a stationary pointer. Emitting more often reintroduces the timer failure and grows a permanent column of smoke under the resting cursor.

Gate on matchMedia('(hover: none)') and drive the emitter only during drags or park it, since touch has no hover position. Under prefers-reduced-motion, render a designed still frame of the composed trail rather than hiding the effect entirely.