0006934: Color choosing can act unexpectedly - Mantis

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ID

Category

Severity

Reproducibility

Date Submitted

Last Update

0006934

[Squeak] Morphic

feature

always

02-18-08 06:28

02-19-08 22:42

Reporter

matthewf

View Status

public

Assigned To

Priority

normal

Resolution

open

Status

new

Product Version

Summary

0006934: Color choosing can act unexpectedly

Description

I got a report of a user's text highlighting disappearing for no discernable reason. I decided to investigate. I got his image, and noted that he had been messing with the World > appearances menu (it was pinned open). He had been changing the fonts, making them more to his taste.

I then tried changing the highlighting color, and immediately saw how this could accidentally happen: (see the attached screenshot) Here is what happens immediately upon mouse-up from world > appearance > text highlight color...
- The color select box pops up just south of the hand on the screen, but the hand is still over the menu. The color of the menu is almost completely white, and, since the mouse is over the menu, the selected color is the color of the menu. If I decide I don't want to change the color, I try clicking again, and the box dissapears. I think nothing of it. But in fact, I have changed the text highlighting color to that of the Appearances menu.

However, the user was not aware that any color on the screen, not just in the color pallette could be selected, so he assumed the pallete dissappeared without any effect when he clicked elsewhere. It didn't even register in his mind that he had performed this action; perhaps he clicked twice in rapid succession on the menu item and never even saw the color dialog; never even meant to click it.

It should not be easy to accidentally change a color of the UI without even meaning to. Currently it is.

Additional Information

Another issue is that the translucency bar acts dumbly; if you change the translucency, you will also select the color the mouse is over when you mouse-up. Since you are over the translucency bar (which is always grey), the UI forces you to choose a grey color if you want a different translucency. Definitely not what is intended.

ChooseHighlightColor.png [^] (22,679 bytes) 02-18-08 06:42

Relationships

Notes
(0011849 - 1061 - 1193 - 1193 - 1193 - 1193 - 1193) wiz 02-19-08 22:42	Hi Matthew, The color picker has two modes. Modal and non-modal. It usually comes up in modal mode. (thats when you see the eye dropper) The eyedropper means color may come from anywhere on screen. This is a feature. This is a highly useful feature which would be missed if removed. So how would you wish it to work? Iirc clicking on the black dot removes the modal mode and the cursor returns to the arrow. Then the box remains up and changes the color when pressed. When not in the box the cursor reacts normally. and other things can go on. Clicking the x in the box removes it. (Or halos work too.) The transparent box color selection sounds like more of a bug. I don't recall running into this problem though. I would expect chaning the transparency to just change the alpha of the reference color? Squeak is quirky and newcomers do run into the quirks because they are expecting something else. Sometime they can be right. Other times the quirks just have to be documented. Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
02-18-08 06:28	matthewf	New Issue
02-18-08 06:39	matthewf	Description Updated
02-18-08 06:42	matthewf	File Added: ChooseHighlightColor.png
02-18-08 06:44	matthewf	Description Updated
02-19-08 22:42	wiz	Note Added: 0011849

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