Some UI observations - part 3

[nobodyspecial]

Hi - I know this stuff is trivial - and I don't want to appear pedantic (please don't flame me!) - but just wanted to make a note for someone at FT to read...

I am using Windows XP Professional (32 bit), with .net 3.5 SP1

Click the "Email" menu and scroll down to "Friends List" - the sub-menu opens. Now try not to move your mouse for a second or two.

On my PC, if I try and move my mouse into the sub-menu (Add Sender, Add Domain and Remove) the sub-menu disappears. This happens every time. The only way I can get to the sub-menu items is to close the menu and try again, but this time move into the sub-menu quickly.

This happens on the "Blacklist" too.

[rusticdog]

I wonder what causes this....I don't see it on either my Win7 or the XP Virtual Machine which is only setup as a 512MB system. Does it matter if you have any emails showing, if you cleared the list for example, (C then Y), does the same happen ?

[nobodyspecial]

Hi mate

I have been looking at this again.



If you look closely at the pic, you will see there is a gap of a few grey pixels between the blue highlighted "Friends List" and the pop-ups black border. If I move the cursor slowly, the pop-up disappears when the cursor leaves the blue border and enters those few grey pixels before the start of the pop-ups black border.

When I move the cursor quickly, I can transition those grey pixels quickly and the pop-up remains.

I am guessing that the "mouse out", or whatever event, does not have time to fire when I move the cursor quickly. When I move slowly, the event fires and the pop-up is removed.

I am also guessing that the blue border may be larger, or the grey area smaller, on other operating systems.

I'm running Windows XP Professional (32 bit) with .net 3.5 SP1 on an ATI Radeon X1650 with latest drivers.

Let me know if I can help any further with this.

[rusticdog]

I would have thought that's just a cosmetic display thing, but under the hood there was no actual gap. If I move my mouse slowly it always remains unless I either mouse over another item in the main menu list, or if I mouse across to the small gap to the right of the arrow. Apart from that it seems I can mouse anywhere and the menu will remain until mouse click.

Will keep trying on some different setups though

[mcullet]

Dark Lord - I have failed you. Please don't turn your death ray gaze in my direction ... RusticDog is a much better target

Nope ... fiddled with different resolutions, different program window sizes ... can't duplicate the behaviour. Don't doubt you - maybe I just have crapulant mouse skills?

These things (menus) are really very simple objects - as in, there's not a lot in them to go wrong. Not like the behaviour that your describe - that's just weird. It's possible to see odd things (sorta like this) under certain driver / hardware combinations - I've seen really weird behaviour (but nothing like what you are seeing though) which resolved by updating a graphic driver / mouse driver - and or changing drivers entirely. For example, Logitech make great keyboards and mouses (mice) but they do have known problems with drivers and 'undocumented features' (auto-downloaders etc). Creative make atrocious drivers and Apple ... well, only Steve Jobs knows what and why some things (code / processes) exist.

Logically speaking, if it is a coding issue then you *should* be able to replicate the same behaviour across all sub-menus. If not ...

[nobodyspecial]

Hi Mike

Been doing more checks - this issue is only evident on MWP pop-up menus - and those are only present on menu "Email | Friends list" and "Email | Blacklist".

I am guessing the the menu widgets are 3rd party?

Not to worry - perhaps it's a specific combination of OS and drivers on my box - although I am pedantic about keeping them all up-to-date.

I am using the old MWP 6.5.4 at the moment, so it does not bother me.

[rusticdog]

I've been trying to find another WPF application that has submenus, but almost all the ones I install have no File menu system at all....I'll have to come back to this another time, running short on time at present.

Edit : And no, there's no third party widgets for this, just straight WPF/XAML as far as I know.

[mcullet]

I've been trying to find another WPF application that has submenus, but almost all the ones I install have no File menu system at all....I'll have to come back to this another time, running short on time at present.

Edit : And no, there's no third party widgets for this, just straight WPF/XAML as far as I know.

Agreed - interesting and a really cool catch but a low priority. Still, it's something to tag and keep an eye out for in case it's symptomatic of other issues (most unlikely but always worth a look).

For nerdlers like me - WPF is part of WindowsClient.Net (as in Microsoft) - If I have some free time I'll check out MSDN (Microsoft developer network) and a few of the usual places to see if anyone else has reported 'weirdness' with the technology.

Dark Lord you have the eyes of ... well, a supreme dark lord. Gotta ask ... wo what were you really doing to have picked this thing up anyway???? I reckon that's a much more interesting tale. Did it involve robots?

[nobodyspecial]

Mike - I wasn't doing anything special. I'm a .net programmer myself and love crawling over new software.

I am really, really picky - I spend ages getting my apps looking right. But that's just me.

I think FT has a top-notch bunch of Beta Testers and this forum is great for giving feedback.