Difference between revisions of "Talk:1479: Troubleshooting"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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As a matter of fact this is a common problem if you often use a dual screen setup with a laptop when you use it on the move without the second screen. If you just want to close the windows, a Esc on a alert windows or alt+F4 (or your system equivalent)will usually solve this problem. For resizeable windows, Windows offers the Win+left/right combination to move a window to specific parts of the screen. I don7t think you really need to  change the resolution for this all the time, it's clearly overkill. [[User:Meneldal|Meneldal]] ([[User talk:Meneldal|talk]]) 06:40, 28 January 2015 (UTC)meneldal
 
As a matter of fact this is a common problem if you often use a dual screen setup with a laptop when you use it on the move without the second screen. If you just want to close the windows, a Esc on a alert windows or alt+F4 (or your system equivalent)will usually solve this problem. For resizeable windows, Windows offers the Win+left/right combination to move a window to specific parts of the screen. I don7t think you really need to  change the resolution for this all the time, it's clearly overkill. [[User:Meneldal|Meneldal]] ([[User talk:Meneldal|talk]]) 06:40, 28 January 2015 (UTC)meneldal
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A long time ago, when the interweb was young (think Win95/98+Napster era), this sort of 'new window creation' was common for ad popups. Create a window with the title just outside the scrren border and giggle as the user tried to delete it. I wrote a small utility back then that actually found and killed these. I used to get a lot of them. I can't seem to remember why.
  
 
:On a dual screen setup you can use 'Win key + Shift + Left/Right key' to shift the window left or right between monitors. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 09:37, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 
:On a dual screen setup you can use 'Win key + Shift + Left/Right key' to shift the window left or right between monitors. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 09:37, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Revision as of 04:51, 29 January 2015

You could also move the off-scrren window back in view by Alt+Space, M to initiate window move, then press any arrow key and your mouse will then be able to move the window back into view. 108.162.249.223 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That's a solution that also relies on obscure knowledge (that modal dialogs have a Move command and the hotkey necessary to access it), so it isn't any better than the solution provided in the strip. AND it requires that the user know where offscreen the dialog is located. Mistakenly believing it is, for example, to the right of the visible screen and therefore moving it left will only make the problem worse it the unseen window is in actuality to the left already. Given the 75% or better odds that the user will guess wrong where the dialog lies, using the Move command would be a notably worse choice then changing screen resolution.- Equinox 199.27.128.120 16:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Actually this does work for all Windows machines and something I've done repeatedly (it's a lot faster than waiting for your video card to repeatedly reconfigure the screen). Once you hit Alt-Space M followed by ANY arrow key, the window will actually be stuck to your mouse pointer; you click it to "drop" the window back onto the page. And yes, the idea that a keyboard arrow key will cause it to be mouse-driven makes no sense Odysseus654 (talk) 17:50, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

As a matter of fact this is a common problem if you often use a dual screen setup with a laptop when you use it on the move without the second screen. If you just want to close the windows, a Esc on a alert windows or alt+F4 (or your system equivalent)will usually solve this problem. For resizeable windows, Windows offers the Win+left/right combination to move a window to specific parts of the screen. I don7t think you really need to change the resolution for this all the time, it's clearly overkill. Meneldal (talk) 06:40, 28 January 2015 (UTC)meneldal

A long time ago, when the interweb was young (think Win95/98+Napster era), this sort of 'new window creation' was common for ad popups. Create a window with the title just outside the scrren border and giggle as the user tried to delete it. I wrote a small utility back then that actually found and killed these. I used to get a lot of them. I can't seem to remember why.

On a dual screen setup you can use 'Win key + Shift + Left/Right key' to shift the window left or right between monitors. --Pudder (talk) 09:37, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Note that the Win-left/right and Win-Shift-left/right key combinations are only supported in Windows 7 or later versions. 173.245.55.27 13:17, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm also familiar with this kind of thing (the strip, I mean, not specifically the last comment). The general form is that a casual (or even expert!) user expects something from the interface but some historic programmer (of UI or application) has caused the 'obvious' continuity to fail, either by ommission (e.g. checking the placement bounds of a popover window) or by being too clever in some manner. The 'stupid knowledge expert' has encountered the problem enough times to: a) find a common root to the issues, and b) stumble upon a solution. (Like the "unstick the Windows-key flag" solution to suddenly getting Run dialogues, Explorer windows and sudden minimising-all to Desktop, seemingly randomly.) 141.101.99.120 08:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

It amazes me how many people assume Microsoft Windows. If you aren't using MS-Windows, the key combinations suggested in the discussion so far are useless. If you are using the X Window System, you might also be seeing a system modal dialog instead of an application modal dialog, in which case, you won't be able anything but talk to that window. (System modal dialogs are usually used for very transient things like popup menus.) Using X, the "cleanup" behavior also depends on the window manager, and neither X or the window manager are part of the operating system (that abomination is now pretty much just an MS-Windows thing). --Divad27182 (talk) 10:39, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

People tend to assume Windows because in the majority of cases that assumption is correct. In the minority of cases where the user isn't on Windows, those asking the question nearly always mention the fact in their question, or direct their question at an OS-specific topic/forum/website. --Pudder (talk) 11:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Mac OS X also uses a baked-in window manager. There are a bunch of apps on OS X that brand themselves as `alternative WMs', but they're usually just a contrived way of tiling windows across the screen somehow (using the built-in WM). Wanting to use a proper tiling WM was what originally drove me to GNU/Linux, long live i3wm! Anyway, this comic could possibly be construed as being related to xkcd.com/934/, which complains about browsers implementing internal WMs in the alt-text. 141.101.99.103 11:45, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
I think the first option (ALT-SPACE to access the window menu, M for the move option, arrow key, mouse movement) has a near-equivalent in pretty much any OS. 173.245.55.27 13:21, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Someone competent in web programming, please write an explanation of the title text Nyq (talk) 13:58, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken (and I'm not an expert), a Chrome App is some sort of program (eg Flash based) that runs in the normal "browser space" - the area where you normally see web pages, and which can use Chrome features and controls. A Chrome Extension is a a program which runs in the background and can act on the browser space or the browser itself (eg open your downloads folder in a new tab with one click of a button). Extensions can also use Chrome features and controls. Sound about right? Jarod997 (talk) 14:34, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Most likely he is on a laptop with an NVidia gpu which in recent driver versions often believe something is connected to the VGA port when this is not the case. The desktop will then think this area is valid, and allow windows to be opened there, in fact it is likely to be opened there because that part of the desktop is clean for windows and looks optimal for placing a new one. At least that is what has been happening to me for the last few months until I forced the VGA port off rather than wait for NVidia to fix their drivers or rolling them back to versions that would misrender recent games (both Windows and Linux drivers did this).108.162.254.98 15:41, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Goddamned this sort of thing happens on my dual monitor setup all the time. The external will be at 1366x768, and stuff will be cut off. I change it to something else, and then revert the changes and it's perfect. I keep a shortcut to the Display settings on my desktop just because of this now. And in other, similarly stupid Windows-issue related news, it's 2009+6 and this crap still isn't fixed. Schiffy (Speak to me|What I've done) 16:22, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The Chrome developer site [1] gives a breakdown on how Chrome apps and extensions are different. Apparently, you can have a Chrome app and a Chrome extension that do similar things, but the extension lacks the user interface, etc., and some of the more interactive features of the app. Aquarello7 (talk) 16:54, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

yeah, I'm not sure what the comparison is - I wonder what an example of a product that is both an app and an extension (that aren't COMPLETELY different, that is) - something like a url shortener or twitter assistant come to mind as possibilities, but even a novice user would likely not have trouble distinguishing between an extension (something embedded in the page, a context menu option, or a shortcut through the omnibox) and an app (full page, possibly even separate window type thing) once the differences were described - though I think you can accomplish window creation in an extension, it's not designed for it, so for a developer to make an extension that can "create" a window and ALSO make an app to do the same thing seems strange and exceptional - not common enough for there to be a joke about it. I'm slightly confused. -- Brettpeirce (talk) 18:35, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course, their are legitimate reasons why an application may want to display itself fully or partially off screen. 173.245.50.92 21:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

This is even the basis for the best pranks (works even better if you disable some shortcuts to make it harder to close). But unless you get the keyboard interrupts, windows+D will solve the modal issue anywayMeneldal (talk) 02:32, 29 January 2015 (UTC)meneldal