Over-persistant info-tips in D6 CHB

By way of introduction: I've found that I don't like working in D6 nearly as
much as D5, and I'm trying to work out what the little changes are that are
spoiling the experience.  I've just worked out one of them.

In D6 there seems (at least on my machine/configuration) to be some sort of
problem with the info-tips in the method list.  The popup info itself is fine,
but sometimes it just won't go away.  For instance, say I open a CHB on Object.
I can hover the mouse over _deepCopy: or == to get a nice little popup.  Good.
Now select _deepCopy: and move the mouse outside the window.  Use the arrow
keys to navigate down the method list.  When I reach the last visible element
(#basicAt:put:) I get a popup into tip even though the mouse is nowhere nearby.
If I now use the arrow keys to navigate back up the list, every selection
insists on displaying its own tip, hiding the method name below and completely
spoiling my morning ;-)  From then on the popups don't go away until I switch
to another window.

I know it's only a small thing, but it's like sand in your sandwiches....

(The full MethodBrowser has the same problem in D5, but since that's not a
window I spend a long time in at one time, the problem is much easier to
ignore.)

Incidentally, I find I'm missing having the selected method's categories listed
in the CHB's title bar (or somewhere).  I will definitely add that (or maybe
only the virtual categories) back into my custom CHB when (if I ever do) I
really switch to using D6.

    -- chris

"Chris Uppal" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:44be083e$0$782$[hidden email]...
This is just the way ListView info-tips work. I don't find it as bad as you
make out though, since the tips don't appear immediately (but after a short
duration) and they also go away if you leave the selection where it is
(again after a short duration). At least that seems to be the way it works
on my 2k3 box. On Vista they don't go away.

The tips don't bother me, but I can appreciate they might be annoying for
some, so I've added an option to MethodBrowser that will allow you to turn
them off without having to edit the view resources.

Hmmm, I think that happened because of this enhancement suggestion:

"I once suggested that the "method category" tree could show the currently
applicable categories in bold.  I'd still like to see some sort of direct
feedback like that.  Especially since the category list in the CHB's
titlebar
tends to be longer that the titlebar itself..."

Sound familiar? :-)

Anyway, the suggestion was that the category information in the title bar
was not useful because it was often incomplete, and that therefore the use
of highlighting in the category tree would be preferable, with which we
agreed. Of course the tree isn't always that useful either, because one has
to scroll and/or expand some nodes, to see the full information, hence the
info tip. Using the browser caption is not a great UI because as you pointed
out, the information may not fit, and also that caption is used to identify
the window in various window management tasks, e.g. Alt+Tab, or on the
taskbar, for which long window titles are rather awkward.

Regards

Blair

Blair,

> The tips don't bother me, but I can appreciate they might be annoying for
> some, so I've added an option to MethodBrowser that will allow you to turn
> them off without having to edit the view resources.

Thank you.


> Hmmm, I think that happened because of this enhancement suggestion:
>
> "I once suggested that the "method category" tree could show the currently
> applicable categories in bold.  I'd still like to see some sort of direct
> feedback like that.  Especially since the category list in the CHB's
> titlebar
> tends to be longer that the titlebar itself..."
>
> Sound familiar? :-)

Yes indeed.  The irony had not escaped me ;-)

For me, the real problem with "unseen" categories is that I have a few virtual
categories which are vital to the way I work, but if I run with the virtual
part of the category tree expanded then that takes up too much screen-space for
other virtual categories which are not (at that time) relevant.  I'll look into
giving the always-important ones a different name, without the '*-'.  I can't
remember off-hand whether that will break anything; if so then I'll probably
just hack those categories back into the title bar (nasty but easy).

    -- chris

Blair,
:
>This is just the way ListView info-tips work. I don't find it as bad as you
>make out though, since the tips don't appear immediately (but after a short
>duration) and they also go away if you leave the selection where it is
>(again after a short duration). At least that seems to be the way it works
>on my 2k3 box. On Vista they don't go away.

Just something I noticed in passing ....

Vista has a new pair of SystemParameters called SPI_SETMESSAGEDURATION
and SPI_GETMESSAGEDURATION that "Sets (Gets) the time that
notification pop-ups should be displayed".   I don't know whether this
applies to tool-tips though (and as I haven't got Vista I can't try)
but it might be worth having a look.
--
Ian

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