Archive
Fix: jqGrid search operator menu items jumping around on hover
A colleague noticed earlier on today, that on the Chrome browser they were using, the search operator menu items of a jqGrid on a web app’s UI were jumping around on hover, making it practically impossible to select one.
Seems this had started occurring on that ASP.net MVC web application, after a recent update to the latest jQuery-UI NuGet package.
Probably the issue wouldn’t occur if it wasn’t using the older free version of jqGrid. Will probably transition it eventually to free-jqGrid, the free fork (and quite evolved since forked) of the older free version of jqGrid, since jqGrid’s newer version is now commercial.
For the time being, I ended up adding this fix to Content/Site.css of the ASP.net MVC webapp:
/* jqGrid search operator menu item hover (uses jQuey-UI) */
a.ui-corner-all.g-menu-item.ui-state-hover {
border: 1px #cccccc !important; /* fix for Chrome: removed "solid" (was causing hovered items to resize and menu to relayout, making it too hard to select them */
/*border: 1px solid #cccccc;*/ /* this is used by jQuery-UI for .ui-state-hover */color: blue; /* showing blue color for hovered over menu text, should show better than a hover border since selected item already has a border itself */
}
This also has the added extra that on hover it shows the hovered item’s text in blue:
Fix: Hypelinks not clickable in RichTextBox under Silverlight
Just fixed a nasty bug in ClipFlair Studio (http://studio.clipflair.net), where one couldn’t click hyperlinks in the Text component when set at ReadOnly mode. In that mode hyperlinks should open up new web pages (in Edit mode you can edit/remove them only of course), but instead when clicked they would show something like a focus rectangle (which they normally never show).
The situation was hard to debug since it wasn’t obvious what had caused the issue (it was working some time ago). I eventually found out that when the RichTextBox in Silverlight (may occur in WPF and WinRT too, haven’t tried) has a Transparent background, then Hyperlinks in it let MouseLeftButtonDown events pass through, so OnMouseLeftButtonDown will fire at their visual parent (or other visual ancestor) if no component in the visual chain marks the event as handled (such events bubble up towards the top of the visual hierarchy/containment chain).
This shouldn’t be much of a problem, if there wasn’t another issue, where if the ancestor called CaptureMouse in their OnMouseLeftButtonDown overriden method (from Control class), which is usual in mouse dragging code (in my case it was a FloatingWindow [TextWindow] that was the visual ancestor of RichTextBox), the hyperlink fails to fire when clicked and shows that weird solid-line border arround it instead.
The fix was easy once I knew what was happening, I attached a MouseLeftButtonDown event handler to the RichTextBox (if one was subclassing it [assuming it allows to do so] they could also have opted to add an overriden OnMouseLeftButtonDown method) that sets Handled property of the event parameter to true to consume it. The fix is available at CodePlex.
One can verify that the fix works now by downloading a sample ClipFlair Activity from https://www.dropbox.com/s/1zr36190xb0m6vk/Test_Text_URLs.clipflair and opening it in ClipFlair Studio. Can also download and build/run the source code of the previous broken version 1faaa8b35749 and test with that save activity file to see that the URLs didn’t open before when clicked but showed a rectangle arround them intead.
Gotcha: .NET Point and PointConverter inconsistency in string format used
I have submitted the following issue to Microsoft Connect (product feedback center):
Point class issue with two-way databinding
In Silverlight, when using databinding code like the following:
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Name="propPosition">
<sdk:Label Style="{StaticResource PropertyLabelStyle}" Content="Position:" Target="{Binding ElementName=edPosition}" />
<TextBox Name="edPosition" Text="{Binding Position, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True, NotifyOnValidationError=true}" />
</StackPanel>and binding (via DataContext) to a View that has the following property:
Point Position { get; set; }
then what you see on the UI is values like 500; 100
but when you try to edit the position and enter say 400; 100 it shows a red message that it is invalid format (caught an exception that is and showing on the UI automatically cause of ValidatesOnExceptions and NotifyOnValidationError being true)
if you enter 400, 100 it works ok (it moves a ClipFlair Studio [http://ClipFlair.net] window arround in my case), so it outputs the two numbers (X, Y) with a ";" but expects to get them separated with a "," (also wonder if it copes OK with numbers in say format used in Greece where decimal point separator is , instead of .)
I managed to reproduce the same behaviour in a .NET console program:
//Console program in C# to demonstrate Point.ToString and PointConverter (from string) inconsistency in string format
//(the former outputs X;Y, the later expects X,Y)
using System;
using System.Windows; //for "Point" class (needs WindowsBase.dll reference)
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Program
{
static PointConverter conv = new PointConverter();
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Point p = new Point(10, 20);
Console.WriteLine(p); //outputs "10;20"
//——————
Point p1 = (Point)conv.ConvertFrom("10, 20");
Console.WriteLine(p1); //outputs "10;20"
//——————
Point p2 = (Point)conv.ConvertFrom("10; 20"); //unhandled exception "System.FormatException" in mscorlib.dll
Console.WriteLine(p2); //never reached cause of exception above
}
}
}
Fix: Visual Studio opens class diagram in XML editor with double click
Recently, to save myself sometime after having renamed some interfaces/classes in the ClipFlair project sourcecode, I right-clicked one of the class diagrams (.cd files) in it at Visual Studio’s “Solution Navigator” (this is an enhanced Solution Explorer addon) and using “Open With…” I opened up the diagrams with the XML editor to do a rename-all operation for the respective class names.
However, after saving the project I found out that from then on, that specific .cd file was opening up as XML file when double-clicked instead of opening up as a Class Diagram in the respective designer pane. Using Open With dialog would open it as a Class Diagram when asked to specifically, but using the checkbox to always open up as Class Diagram wouldn’t help fix the double-click problem for that specific .cd file (others would open up fine as class diagrams, not as XML files, when double-clicked).
I just managed to fix that issue by right clicking the file node in solution navigator’s tree and and excluding that file from the project (not deleting!), then saving the project, closing the solution containg the project and adding the file (via “Add existing file”) again after having reopened the solution. I could also possibly have right clicked selected “Unload project” after saving it and then select to reload it again, think that would have worked too.
Using VisualHG addon for Visual Studio I commited the changes to the Mercurial repository used by ClipFlair on Codeplex, which showed me that the file difference that did the fix was the following in the .csproj project file:
<ItemGroup>
<None Include="Diagrams\Windows.cd" />
- <None Include="Diagrams\Windows.Views.Interfaces.cd">
- <SubType>Designer</SubType>
- </None>
+ <None Include="Diagrams\Windows.Views.Interfaces.cd" />
<None Include="Diagrams\Windows.Views.ViewModels.cd" />
</ItemGroup>
That is instead of that marked-as-bold entry above (marked by the diff tool with – prefix), the line marked with + prefix should be used instead. This is obviously some bug in Visual Studio 2010, it’s nice to know though that you can easily take the project offline and edit the .csproj to fix it (or remove the .cd file, save the project, reload it and add the file again).
HowTo: load CaptionElements into Silverlight Media Framework player
Trying to make CaptionsGridWindow of ClipFlair serve captions editing on-the-fly to SMF (Silverlight Media Framework [now called MMPPF]) player component, I had a real hard time, plagued by a bug at TimedTextElementStyle. It seems to be setting default FontSize for captions using a “Cell” unit instead of using a “Pixel” unit. Currently SMF only supports “Pixel” units at FontSize of TimedTextElements according to the codedoc notes.
Another issue I had was that CaptionRegion constructor sets it to be active all the time (specifying a Begin value of a min possible TimeExtent and an End value of the max possible TimeExtent), so it renders ShowBackground.WhenActive setting useless for it. That is if you want the captions background to show up only when there are captions showing (active), then you have to set the CaptionRegion’s background to Colors.Transparent and set each CaptionElement’s background to some non-transparent color (note that both CaptionRegion and CaptionElement are TimedTextElements, with the later added to the former’s Children property, forming a TimedTree that is).
public void UpdateMarkers(MediaMarkerCollection<TimedTextElement> newMarkers) { if (newMarkers == null) return; CaptionRegion region = new CaptionRegion(); region.Style.ShowBackground = ShowBackground.WhenActive;
//doesn't seem to work if other than transparent color is used region.Style.BackgroundColor = Colors.Transparent; foreach (CaptionElement marker in newMarkers) { region.Children.Add(marker); marker.CaptionElementType = TimedTextElementType.Text; marker.Style.ShowBackground = ShowBackground.WhenActive; marker.Style.BackgroundColor = Color.FromArgb(100, 0, 0, 0);
//use a semi-transparent background marker.Style.Color = Colors.White; //marker.Style.TextAlign = TextAlignment.Center; Length length = new Length { Unit = LengthUnit.Pixel, Value = 20 }; //must use this, since the default LengthUnit.Cell used
//at TimedTextStyle constructor is not supported marker.Style.FontSize = length; } Captions.Add(region); }
Γιατί παρατάθηκε η χρήση της εφαρμογής περιουσιολογίου στο Taxisnet
Πρόσφατα το Taxisnet έδωσε άτυπη παράταση χρήσης της εφαρμογής περιουσιολογίου για τον έλεγχο και διόρθωση (χωρίς πρόστιμο) των παλαιότερων δηλώσεων E9 (μεταβολών περιουσιακής κατάστασης) για τις ημερομηνίες 1-1-2009, 1-1-2010, 1-1-2011, που κανονικά έληγε τέλος Μαρτίου. Προφανώς όλοι μπήκαν τελευταία στιγμή στο σύστημα και “γονάτισε”. Τα μηνύματα σφάλματος πάντως που έδινε δεν ήταν καθόλου φιλικά στο χρήστη. Δύο παραδείγματα φαίνονται παρακάτω:
Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7 taskbar previews, a broken story
Hello Microsoft, can you count? In the image above you can see the Windows 7 taskbar showing THREE (merged) icons/instances of Internet Explorer, although I only have ONE windows open (they seem to use multiple processes internally when you have many tabs, but why should the user care?). More importantly, in the popup shown when left-clicking the pinned Internet Explorer button, you can count 18 entries for open tabs, however in the Internet Explorer window there are many-many more open tabs.
This occurs both in Classic Windows theme and in Aero theme (using Windows 7 Ultimate – a courtesy of Microsoft to active testers of Windows 7 beta) and shows both when you see a list of titles (for many tabs) and when you’d see previews (shown when that bug makes it “THINK” you have few tabs – you might have lots more of course as shown above)
This brings to the surface the bad practice of some Microsoft teams on Microsoft Connect (former Product Feedback Center). They tend to close bug submissions very easily without checking who I the submitter (e.g. a current or former Microsoft MVP like me) and what is their past record of bug submission resolutions in all Microsoft products over the years.
I had submitted this issue in the past (sadly I currently can’t Connect to Microsoft Connect to locate it), only to see it soon closed as non reproducible without much effort to think why it might be happening (update: since I can’t find that feedback now that I made it to connect again – probably was together with some other tab-related feedback – I submitted it separately at https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/725397/ie9-bad-behaviour-with-multiple-tabs). For example, I believe IE chokes upon a frozen tab – e.g. one with some heavy JavaScript or Flash – and stops polling the other tabs for their title/preview etc., showing only some few as a result. Also it seems that counting IE processes as separate apps and merging them as three IE9 icons (when you only have one window with many tabs open) might play a role (might it be showing tab previews from only one of the IE9 processes?). Have they checked their source code if it is robust enough against such a scenario? Why do they feel they need to reproduce every bad software behavior reported first, instead of proactively act to be shielded against similar software behaviors?
Especially the many open tabs scenario that really makes IE9 crawl to its knees both in performance and usability, which is really sad given the effort Microsoft has spent on it. Not to speak of the many-many favorites (gathered over several years or from many synced machines – e.g via Windows Live Mesh) scenario and the very poorly designed, folder-based Favorites dialog which takes a long-long time to open up and has a miserable scrolling UI with no embedded Search filter.
Speaking of multiple tabs, in Mozilla Firefox you can set an option to remember tabs that were open at last application run so that you can shut down your PC and continue later. With IE9 only if it crashes it suggests to reopen previous tabs at next run, so unless you use the Add Current Tabs to Favorites (Folder) option of the very-very slow (if you have many favs like me) IE9 Favorites tab, you are forced to keep IE9 and your PC running if you want to checkout those multiple tabs you’ve opened, but don’t have the time to do it all in one go.
Can’t connect to Microsoft Connect
Ahem, Microsoft Connect says I can’t Connect (sign-in) to it for the moment. The Microsoft bug reporting site probably came upon some bug itself?
#LOL
TAXISnet – Internal Server Error
Πήγα και εγώ χθες στην εφορία μου κι έλαβα τον κλειδάριθμο για να πιστοποιήσω το λογαριασμό που είχα από παλιότερα (στο παλιό TAXISnet) – έδωσε και νέο password όπως μου ζήτησε και μπήκα να δώ τι καλούδια έχει.
Φαίνεται ενδιαφέρον (απ’ότι κατάλαβα πλέον τα βιβλία θα τα κρατάμε ΜΟΝΟ ηλεκτρονικά), αλλά έχει τα bug-άκια του ακόμη απ’ότι φαίνεται. Παραπάνω φαίνεται ένα “Error 500–Internal Server Error” στο νέο TAXISnet.
Mου χτύπησε όταν πήγα στο “Εφαρμογές φορολ. προφίλ” που σου δείχνει ποιές εφαρμογές υπάρχουν, σε ποιές έχεις πρόσβαση και σε αφήνει να πας σε αυτές από εκεί στα γρήγορα. Το πρόβλημα εμφανίστηκε όταν εκεί διάλεξα “Εφαρμογή Τελών και Ειδικών Φόρων” και πάτησα “Εύρεση” (γιατί άραγε να πρέπει να πατήσω καν το κουμπί και να μην αρκεί να διαλέξω στο dropdown list τι θέλω να δώ;)
George Birbilis @zoomicon 