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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 5:00 am 
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go enjoy your vacation Jorge
bugs will still be here when you come back


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 5:06 am 
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winstep wrote:

Quote:
You mean the empty space at the bottom of the vertical Shelf?

The Shelf can only display as many icons vertically as they *fully* fit (i.e.; it does not display *partial* icons). If an extra icon + text + etc... (i.e.; full icon cell/grid) does not fit in the available space, then the space is left blank (wasted).

Also, remember there is also some space (20 pixels) reserved for scroll arrows at the bottom of the vertical Shelf, which is deduced from the total available space for icons. Even if that particular tab does not need scroll arrows, the space must still be reserved for them.



Yes, I don`t know why I even mentioned that, nothing can be change in code for that. Is up to us users to play with values, if we want to "fix" this.

winstep wrote:

Quote:
Vlad wrote:
- Initial setup a little messy: extra workshelf and dock created and opened


What do you mean by this?


If you do a clean install, I guess it is ok (you have to have something showing on screen), but if you do an upgrade and most likely have already a setup (like I did), having the default shelf and dock appear on top of your shelf and docks it is a little messy. No big deal, one can easily delete/deactivate the new dock and shelf, but I thought this was something to be considered.

winstep wrote:

Quote:
lad wrote:
- Autohide for shelfs that are docked to screen edge is broken (clicking on the tab to open will open the tab, but will not close it automatically). It is ok for floating shelfs.


This only happened with vertical Shelves, right? Fixed.


Right.

winstep wrote:

Quote:
Vlad wrote:
- Docks in shelfs (vertical shelfs only) seem to open in the wrong position if the setting for subdocks is parallel to parent or horizontal:


Fixed, thanks. Forgot to change the opening sub-dock position for vertical Shelves - this is the kind of thing to be on the look out for. There are just too many features and possible interactions, I'm bound to forget about some of those.


So we have homework to do, while you are in holiday :lol: Try to enjoy your vacation Jorge!


winstep wrote:

Quote:
Well, I wanted to leave you guys with a beta featuring the new Drawers before I went on holidays, but, after compiling I decided to make sure Nexus Ultimate was running ok as well.

Good thing that I did. That change I made to the appbar routines to take into account things like horizontal taskbars?

Well, that caused an interesting effect: both Shelves (the one from WorkShelf and the one from Nexus Ultimate) started creeping up on the screen, the available screen space getting smaller and smaller lol

Fortunately I managed to exit Nexus Ultimate before finding out what would happen when the space got squished to nothing. But the bad news is that despite my frantic efforts I still haven't been able to come up with a work-around that works - and I run out of time. :(



Relax Jorge. I think (and for certain I am not alone in thinking that) that you do a great job in providing us with a good product. No reasonable person could
make an negative comment about that.
I have no doubts that you will fix this when you come back. Happy holiday Jorge!
Like I said a few rows above, we have our homework to do, while waiting :D


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 5:09 am 
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seeker wrote:

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go enjoy your vacation Jorge
bugs will still be here when you come back


Nicely aligned and hungry... Waiting to be fed new code :D


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 7:53 am 
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Vlad wrote:
If you do a clean install, I guess it is ok (you have to have something showing on screen), but if you do an upgrade and most likely have already a setup (like I did), having the default shelf and dock appear on top of your shelf and docks it is a little messy. No big deal, one can easily delete/deactivate the new dock and shelf, but I thought this was something to be considered.


Wait... that was NOT supposed to happen. Did it happen to every one else too?


ANYWAY....


Thanks guys... never-the-less, I removed the new appbar code that was causing the problem (I'll fix it when I come back) and recompiled. No way in hell I would go on holidays and not leave something for you guys to play with in the mean time.

you can download the new beta of Winstep Xtreme v18.7 from HERE

and the beta of Nexus Ultimate v18.7 from HERE.

Exit all running Winstep applications, then unzip and run setup.

You can create Drawers from the Docks & Shelves tab in Preferences. Of course, much of it is still stuck with spit, so let me know if it falls apart. There's a bunch of stuff that needs to be discussed and resolved.

For instance, you will notice that Drawers share the same Preferences as Shelves, with some options missing. One thing I still want to do (which I left visible for now) is change the field that for Shelves is the 'Minimum Icon Rows' (i.e.; how many icon rows visible by default, which currently does nothing if dealing with a Drawer) to the exact opposite if it is a Drawer (i.e.; 'Maximum shown Icon Rows' by default). This because a drawer will currently expand to either show all the icons in it or fill the available screen space, whatever comes first. This way we would have a way to limit its size.

One thing that also concerns me is the fact that the description of many settings directly mentions the Shelf. This is a pain, because changing 'Shelf' to 'Drawer' means completely new translations (or English text if nobody updates the translation). I wonder if I should leave the word 'Shelf' in even when referring to a 'Drawer'.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:56 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Vlad wrote:
If you do a clean install, I guess it is ok (you have to have something showing on screen), but if you do an upgrade and most likely have already a setup (like I did), having the default shelf and dock appear on top of your shelf and docks it is a little messy. No big deal, one can easily delete/deactivate the new dock and shelf, but I thought this was something to be considered.

Wait... that was NOT supposed to happen. Did it happen to every one else too?

Nope. Certainly not here or I would have bitched and moaned. ;)
winstep wrote:
ANYWAY....

Thanks guys... never-the-less, I removed the new appbar code that was causing the problem (I'll fix it when I come back) and recompiled. No way in hell I would go on holidays and not leave something for you guys to play with in the mean time.

you can download the new beta of Winstep Xtreme v18.7 from HERE

and the beta of Nexus Ultimate v18.7 from HERE.

.... For instance, you will notice that Drawers share the same Preferences as Shelves, with some options missing. One thing I still want to do (which I left visible for now) is change the field that for Shelves is the 'Minimum Icon Rows' (i.e.; how many icon rows visible by default, which currently does nothing if dealing with a Drawer) to the exact opposite if it is a Drawer (i.e.; 'Maximum shown Icon Rows' by default). This because a drawer will currently expand to either show all the icons in it or fill the available screen space, whatever comes first. This way we would have a way to limit its size.

One thing that also concerns me is the fact that the description of many settings directly mentions the Shelf. This is a pain, because changing 'Shelf' to 'Drawer' means completely new translations (or English text if nobody updates the translation). I wonder if I should leave the word 'Shelf' in even when referring to a 'Drawer'.

Good plan re: max icon rows. Leaving 'Shelf' could be confusing, so for the time being I'd stick to whatever name and leave it for translations to get updated. Anyway, if it's going to be 'Drawer', why does it have to be translated anyway? Many such names don't really translate all that well. I mean, would, e.g., 'web browser' be translated into other lingos? Doubt it. (Icelandic seems to be one of the few special cases of a language that makes up its own words for almost anything and everything.)

Anyway, let's not get our drawers in a twist. ;) (For those not familiar with proper, British English, 'drawers' can also refer to a large female under garment, aka knickers. And speaking of British English, when are we going to get a proper UK English translation? I HATE HATE HATE American spellings and Americanisms with a passion. :P )

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 3:00 pm 
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First 'Buglet' of new beta?

With one particular shelf (ATM having two for testing only), in both top and bottom edge docked as well as floating near top or bottom, the icons extend into and overlap the scroll arrow area/arrows, as per screen grab. Theme independent. Vanishes in vertical orientation.

Also, the 'wrong' prefs icon can be seen in the grab - WS simply does not see the 'F' image.

Oh, and BTW, that 'inactive' overlay on the non-active scroll arrow - noticed in first beta but kept forgetting about it - can we now use an inactive bitmap? (Loos a bit odd in some themes as is.)

::Edit - Also, the icon font in my other shelf seems 1 or 2 points larger than normal/configured. Will investigate further.::
Attachment:
HShelfScrollBuglet.png
HShelfScrollBuglet.png [ 7.26 KiB | Viewed 15550 times ]

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:09 pm 
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Something else, though nothing like any kind of buglet I would think bu probably just odd-seeming normal behaviour.

Having set up my first 'Drawer' (I still stumble over that term), I notice that it effectively turns the shelf body bitmap by 45 degs., which can make it look a bit alien in the context of some themes as esp. here also where the bitmap get stretched beyond recognition.

Very oddly however, when docked or floating horizontally, the prefs mouse-over works, at least in the themes tested so far.

Also, more on the previous report. On further testing, this does seem to be theme and icon font size related. In some themes, horizontal shelves will have the scroll arrow space problem, in others it's vertical shelves. In some both seem free of it, in others, one orientation is completely normal while in the other the scroll arrows are almost right under/beside the the icon, and in some the arrows sit squarely in the middle of the icon.

The icon text size difference seems to be purely due to horizontal vs. vertical shelves. Mostly, in v. shelves text seems to be 1pt. larger than in the h. one, in a few the difference looks more like 2pts.
Attachment:
Drawer1.png
Drawer1.png [ 16.88 KiB | Viewed 15546 times ]

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 6:18 pm 
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Another little buglet. When deleting a larg-ish number of folders with large files by dragging from another app like a file manager and dropping onto the recycler - regardless whether in-shelf, in-dock or desktop - it deletes only the first file or folder and leaves the rest untouched. If the total is under 1 1/2 to 2 Gig max, it's fine, anything larger and it barfs. Never did that before - I frequently shift around large numbers of large files/folders so tend to del by using the recycler as its normally quicker.

Forgot about that one yesterday. Nothing else not already mentioned, so far anyway.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:21 am 
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nexter wrote:
Oh, and BTW, that 'inactive' overlay on the non-active scroll arrow - noticed in first beta but kept forgetting about it - can we now use an inactive bitmap? (Loos a bit odd in some themes as is.)


It's not an 'inactive overlay'. It's the same scroll button icon/image but with 50% alpha transparency. I added that because it's a clear visual indicator that pressing that button will do nothing (i.e.; you reached the end), so better than it was before.

nexter wrote:
Also, the icon font in my other shelf seems 1 or 2 points larger than normal/configured.


I did change something regarding the icon font in the Shelf, but I said nothing on purpose to see if anybody would notice. However, it's not the font size (although it may have an influence on the 'lenght' of the text).

Normally text is printed with ClearType anti-aliasing, which is the best looking version. However, ClearType has aa major problem - it anti-aliases the text by mixing text color with actual colors of the *background*, rather than just using different alpha values.

This makes it totally unsuitable for rendering text against a transparent background, as it will pick up whatever the 'transparent' color is regardless of transparency level: if the background color is RGB(0,0,0) with Alpha of 0 - i.e.; fully transparent black, the black still shines through the text turning it into an unreadable 'blob' of black text if later rendered into a non-dark background.

Winstep applications use several tricks to speed up several operations, which would be too slow otherwise. For instance, printing text in GDI+ is a really slow operation - if text had to be reprinted every time the Shelf is performing a smooth scroll or icon shift operation, the whole thing would grind to a 1 FPS halt. So, to work around this, the icons and their text are printed once against a transparent background and it is this transparent image that is then shifted and superimposed on the Shelf background via the much faster AlphaBlend function.

Since this means text must be printed against a fully transparent background, Cleartype antialiasing cannot be used. Normal anti-aliasing is used instead, which simply doesn't look as good.

Previously I only used normal anti-aliasing on the transparent background image, and Cleartype otherwise, but this meant there was a clearly visible difference on text quality and text size as soon as the smooth scrolling/icon shift operation ended. This way those operations are seamless, but at the cost of a little bit of loss in text quality.

Hope the above is not too technical and makes at least some sense to you guys. lol

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:26 am 
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As for the name 'Drawer', please feel free to make alternate suggestions if you guys have some... :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:42 pm 
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winstep wrote:
nexter wrote:
Oh, and BTW, that 'inactive' overlay on the non-active scroll arrow - noticed in first beta but kept forgetting about it - can we now use an inactive bitmap? (Loos a bit odd in some themes as is.)

It's not an 'inactive overlay'. It's the same scroll button icon/image but with 50% alpha transparency. I added that because it's a clear visual indicator that pressing that button will do nothing (i.e.; you reached the end), so better than it was before.

Ah right. Yep, in the majority of themes it looks OK, though I'd still prefer to have it as an on/off option (or skinnable inactive arrows).
winstep wrote:
nexter wrote:
Also, the icon font in my other shelf seems 1 or 2 points larger than normal/configured.

I did change something regarding the icon font in the Shelf, but I said nothing on purpose to see if anybody would notice. However, it's not the font size (although it may have an influence on the 'lenght' of the text).

Normally text is printed with ClearType anti-aliasing, which is the best looking version. However, ClearType has aa major problem - it anti-aliases the text by mixing text color with actual colors of the *background*, rather than just using different alpha values....

.... Previously I only used normal anti-aliasing on the transparent background image, and Cleartype otherwise, but this meant there was a clearly visible difference on text quality and text size as soon as the smooth scrolling/icon shift operation ended. This way those operations are seamless, but at the cost of a little bit of loss in text quality.

Hope the above is not too technical and makes at least some sense to you guys. lol

Yep, perfect sense. At the relatively small font sizes involved I don't think it's really noticeable at all. Anyway, who cares if it does the trick, right? :)

Still doesn't explain the difference in the appearance of the icon text between v. and h. shelves, i.e., 1 or 2pts. larger in vertical. Or does it?

As for the 'drawer' background thing - on reflection, this does make perfect sense actually even if at first it seems a tad odd. Which reminds me - how about having the 'drawer' actually pop out of a shelf, á la a dock? I guess then it could just about justifiably be called a 'Drawer', sliding out of the shelf - though that's still more 'tray' like.
winstep wrote:
As for the name 'Drawer', please feel free to make alternate suggestions if you guys have some... :)

Well, I already suggested 'WorkTray', 'ShelfTray' and 'The Tray' I think. 'Slab', 'The Slab', 'TabTray' also come to mind.

More problems found -

(This may have been the case in the first beta also but remained unnoticed, though don't think so.) When docking a shelf on the right edge, or moving one from the left half of the screen to the right, the tabs take on the wrong order. They should be in the same positions as in a bottom shelf rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise complete with tabs and all, as is the case for clockwise rotation for a left edge move. This looks just entirely wrong.

Also, when turning a NextSTART menu horizontal (in themes that provide sep. bitmaps and gadgets), the titlebar gadgeds sometimes don't show, unless each is click-held first after which they seem to remain. (Doubt this is in any way beta related as the only thing that seems to have changed is the addition of the alpha for the 'inactive' scroll arrow. May simply not have noticed it before?)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:50 am 
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Bit of a problem with NeXus.

If one accidentally clicks just outside of the sub-dock arrow's area, that whole sub-dock gets deleted. Seems to happen only with vertical docks. Thought it was just a fluke, but it's happened repeatedly over the last few days. Probably not beta related, I suppose.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 9:11 am 
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Thanks for the reports, but I hope it's understood I won't be able to test any of those things until I get back. :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 9:35 am 
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nexter wrote:
When docking a shelf on the right edge, or moving one from the left half of the screen to the right, the tabs take on the wrong order. They should be in the same positions as in a bottom shelf rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise complete with tabs and all, as is the case for clockwise rotation for a left edge move. This looks just entirely wrong.


Actually this is an entirely subjective opinion - and I did struggle with it too in the beginning, and found it actually makes more sense this way. When you flip an horizontal Shelf vertically (i.e.; change the docked edge from the bottom to the top), it only flips the Shelf vertically, it does not flip the Shelf in the horizontal axis too, as it should if you were doing a true rotation.

This way, if the first tab (let's call it 'Main') is the leftmost tab for a Shelf docked to the bottom of the screen, it remains the leftmost tab for a Shelf docked at the top of the screen. Likewise for vertical Shelves - the Main tab is always the first tab counting from the top.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.5?
PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 2:25 am 
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winstep wrote:
Thanks for the reports, but I hope it's understood I won't be able to test any of those things until I get back. :)

Most certainly is understood Jorge - you shouldn't even be in here and should be enjoying your short break. :)
winstep wrote:
nexter wrote:
When docking a shelf on the right edge, or moving one from the left half of the screen to the right, the tabs take on the wrong order. They should be in the same positions as in a bottom shelf rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise complete with tabs and all, as is the case for clockwise rotation for a left edge move. This looks just entirely wrong.

Actually this is an entirely subjective opinion - and I did struggle with it too in the beginning, and found it actually makes more sense this way. When you flip an horizontal Shelf vertically (i.e.; change the docked edge from the bottom to the top), it only flips the Shelf vertically, it does not flip the Shelf in the horizontal axis too, as it should if you were doing a true rotation.

This way, if the first tab (let's call it 'Main') is the leftmost tab for a Shelf docked to the bottom of the screen, it remains the leftmost tab for a Shelf docked at the top of the screen. Likewise for vertical Shelves - the Main tab is always the first tab counting from the top.

It's still completely counter-intuitive AFAIC, and I keep clicking the wrong tab and esp. the prefs instead of the hide icon and vice versa. The only way I could ever envisage using a right edge shelf in this arrangement would be by specially setting it up so everything would be in the 'right' order.

Now, get the hell out of here and get out there and have fun my friend! :)

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