3.6gamma candidate image available

Mike Roberts mike at mjr104.co.uk
Mon Sep 29 21:46:21 UTC 2003


Hi,

I was playing around in the image testing things and I noticed something odd with URL links.  I'm not sure if this has been noticed before.  It's not show-stopping, just a little niggly.

The 'Welcome to...' window provides some examples.

The first thing isn't odd, its just that the 'VM' link is a TextDoIt and directly loads Scamper.  This is great.  However, the 'Basic' link is a TextURL and this requires a confirmation click.  Apart from being inconsistent, it seems a shame to have to confirm the link when Scamper is available.  I have had a quick look at TextURL and in actOnClickFor: it seems to be doing quite a lot.  I'm not sure what people think about this.  That aside, here is the odd behaviour.

Sometimes, when you move the mouse the dialog is automatically confirmed.  Sometimes it is automatically canceled.  I'm not sure where this is happening but I am not clicking on either of the options so I'm not sure if an event is being generated somewhere.

Also, if you really don't want to view the link then you have to confirm that you have cancelled as the method offers you the source.  The comment in the code indicating the intent is fair enough if it really couldn't find a web browser, but that isn't the case in this instance.  The logic probably just needs to be tidied up here. 

I'm not sure how best to debug these links.  Is there a quick way to get up the contents of the special action?  I resorted to inspecting through the run array and finding the correct Text objects for each one.

In trying the actions out in the inspector, I just did a self actOnClickFor:self and probably obviously self is not the same as in the Welcome window as self is the (inspector) TextURL.  The mouse funnies don't happen here.  By inserting a halt in the method, I can see that the object passed to actForClickOn: in 'Welcome to...' is a Workspace. hmm..  There isn't anything special in this case so I wonder what it is about the Welcome window that maybe interacts with the pop up menus?  This approach to debugging this seems a bit bogus anyway because it has a feel of a timing issue or something to do with the mouse events and sticking in a halt has the feeling of stopping Morphic in its tracks.  I don't know enough about morphic to know really what happens here - have you just stopped one specific step?

I've just had another play around and the best way to provoke it is to click on 'Basic' and don't move the mouse.  The hand is just on the left edge of the pop-up.  Immediately move the hand to the left and you get a 'cancel'.  Or.  Immediately move the mouse right into 'Yes' and you get a yes.  Or.  Immediately move the house up into the heading bar of the menu and then down into 'yes' and it behaves normally.  Weird :-)

Anyway I'm rambling.  Someone may spot what this is.

Apart from that, I had a great time playing around in Worlds of Squeak.  I didn't manage to break anything, which is unusual :-)  Oh, there was one thing.  There is a bug of sorts in the Freecell game.  When you click on a card, the morphic dragging method does some thinking about whether you want to pick up a stack etc.  If you move the mouse quickly, you can get the mouse away from the cards before the cards have started to move.  The drag point is then in the wrong place.  If you wait a little while before moving, the cards move correctly under the hand.  I'm not sure what is happening here.  Any ideas?

Cheers,

Mike



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list