WindowBlinds breaks Window close detection?

Published on July 14, 2007 By htalvitie In WindowBlinds

Dear Stardock,

Early last year I purchased Object Desktop and ran WindowBlinds 5.0 on my Windows XP.

Soon I noticed that most (if not all) skins break the close functionality on the system menu, e.g. double-clicking the icon on the left side of the title bar doesn't close the window as it should.

I struggled for a while and then finally uninstalled WB. I was unable to change my Windows habits.

Today, I was brave enough to give WindowBlinds another run. I installed the current 5.51 on a fresh Windows Server 2003, and found the exact same problem.

Am I really the only one with this problem, or are everybody else using some other shortcut for closing their windows? Since I actually work on my computer and must choose functionality over eye-candy, I was forced to uninstall WB once again. Maybe I'll retry again when 6.0 comes out.

I really like WB and would like to use it permanently so hopefully this single annoyance gets fixed.

For information, I made a screencast of my desktop with v5.51: http://s3.amazonaws.com/BugCast/WindowBlinds/WindowBreaks.html

Hope this helps in locating & fixing the problem!

Regards,
Harri

Comments (Page 4)

htalvitie

on Jul 17, 2007

And you have a global override to make double-clicking the Titlebar "always" close the window.

I do not want to make double-clicking the title bar close the window..

htalvitie

on Jul 17, 2007

Since people have misinterpreted my description of the problem repeatedly, I will once again add a visual aid. This time with an animated GIF, since some commenters haven't clearly analyzed the Flash versions.

I'll try to keep it simple this time.

Quentin94

on Jul 17, 2007

* double-click detected when second press occurs in less than 200 ms

did you try to change the speed of the double click occurs in less or more?

htalvitie

on Jul 17, 2007

did you try to change the speed of the double click occurs in less or more?

The 200 ms speed detection quote was from the Autohotkey script, not built-in Windows value. That script is a kludge, and doesn't provide a real solution.

Just in case you are interested in the built-in values, I have experimented the different double-click timeout and pixel thresholds. I have modified HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\DoubleClickWidth and HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\DoubleClickWidth (TweakUI, mouse control panel), but haven't noticed any change in the success ratio.

Since WindowBlinds bring more processing overhead, I would start solving this problem based in the timing-consideration. It has been discussed for example at Raymond Chen's blog post:

On a heavily loaded system, delivery of messages can be delayed. If the WM_LBUTTONDBLCLK message is delayed more than the WM_LBUTTONDOWN message, then the time would expire and the program would incorrectly interpret the action as a single click, before subsequently receiving a double click message.

(Source: Logical consequences of the way Windows converts single-clicks into double-clicks)

htalvitie

on Jul 18, 2007

Just my additional 5 euro cents:

On a Terminal Services connection, identical double-clicking closes window always. I'm using rdesktop v1.5.0 on a Gentoo Linux (IBM TP770ED) and a rdp5 connection to my Windows Server 2003 box.

Interesting (and also quite nice), that my WB-themed desktop works better on a remote desktop connection to a Linux box than natively. Just slower. :-/

And as somebody mentioned here earlier, it's not consistent from app to app. There seems to be a small group of programs allowing the clickety-click to work correctly.

For example, when I was closing the Control Panel window (and/or an Control Panel applet, don't remember now for sure which) by double-clicking, I was able to close it with a 100% success rate.

For most apps, however, it's closer to 0%.

Quentin94

on Jul 18, 2007

If you like WB and you think it's a bug ok but developpers are now aware that it's possibly a bug cool, change your habits a little and use the close button in waiting for WB6 who maybe (or the clean install) will fix it.

If you cause of this bug dislike WB but you wanted tell them it's made, now you can disable it in waiting for WB6 who maybe (or the clean install) will fix it.

Just my 100€

htalvitie

on Jul 18, 2007

waiting for WB6 who maybe (or the clean install) will fix it

Speaking of fixes and versions... I haven't found a issue tracking system anywhere. It's difficult (if not impossible -- without testing each patch) to find out, what fixes are included in each release.

Hankers

on Jul 18, 2007

This has some info on release fixes - WB History

htalvitie

on Jul 18, 2007

Yes, I'm familiar with the history file (shows up on the Stardock Central UI).

I was actually studying it last weekend, when I attempted to figure how much progress there has been within the last 12 months or so.

Can you tell based on that file? I couldn't.

The revision file doesn't provide any references to issues reported or requested by users. It has even stopped reporting dates for the releases (I can only guess why).

I would appreciate, if the revision file had info and references to this or other forums to give some idea what has been fixed and what not.

For example: "Version 5.52, released Aug 1, 2007, Minor tweaks: [xxx], see: url forums.wincustomize, post 123 ..".

Buggerstop

on Jul 26, 2007

I have a similar and equally annoying problem with WB.

To close a window, apparently a lot of people move the mouse to the "X" button, make sure they're right on top of it, and click it. That's a big waste of time. I simply move the mouse to the corner with one small motion (it's not very far depending on the mouse pointer speed and acceleration) and click without looking, because the far upper-right pixel is part of the button.

However, most of the WindowBlinds themes have an inactive area in the far corner, so I have to watch where the pointer is and put it right over the button. For me this was bad enough to be a showstopper.

I use the keyboard whenever I can to save time, but ALT+F4 isn't a very convenient key combo.

So this probably doesn't help you, but no, you're not the only one who chooses efficiency and functionality over eye candy.

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