Hovering between Effects Gallery items BUG!

[MusicLaw Profile]

Version 1.1.23 on Win XP Pro SP 3

When Hovering and moving between the various cells in the Effects Gallery, the entire SPE screen momentary goes entirely white (almost like a strobe flash) before showing the Effects controls of the newly hovered over Effect cell. This only happens when moving to the Right, Up or Down between cells. Curiously, when moving from one cell to the one on the immediate Left (i.e. the one showing only a vertical strip of the left adjacent image because it is mostly covered by the Effects Controls), the screen refreshes normally and the newly hovered over cell and its Effect Controls panel display normally! However, if I quickly hover to the Cell two to the left the white refresh problem does occur!

This is occurring when SPE is running Maximized on the Display. When I used the phrase "entire screen" above, SPE's Windows Title Bar and Status Bar are not obscured by the all white screen refresh problem. When SPE is running in a less than Maximized window on the monitor, the SPE's Windows Title bar remains unaffected by the momentary white out of the SPE window. To clarify the white out pblm only happens within the SPE window. It does not affect the background or other non SPE program windows visible on the monitor.

[admin]

I might have an idea what this could be to do with. It's quite subtle though. Firstly does the flash appear for around half a second, so it's quick, but not as quick as a camera flash for instance? Secondly, can you make it disapear by moving your mouse quickly into the effects control panel? Obviously you'll have to move your mouse very quickly if it disapears in a split second anyway, but you might be able to get a feel for if you can get it disapearing quicker by moving your mouse. The reason I ask is: On all other OS's we've tested with the panel fades in over half a second, but it becomes opaque as soon as you move your mouse in. It's possible that XP is having trouble with fading the window in.

Tony

[MusicLaw Profile]

The screen refresh abnormality is very fast; probably in the realm of 100ms. Absolutely nowhere near as sustained as 500ms.

The screen refresh flash abnormality occurs before the Effect Control for the image is presented. After the screen refresh flash, the Effect Controls appear adjoining on the left of the individual image cell in the Gallery. The cursor may be moved back and forth from the image to it's adjoining Effect controls and anywhere within that currently active region (i.e having "focus" in Win XP parlance) w/o any screen issue whatsoever.

More exploring of the symptom also reveals that when the cursor is moved out of the darker region comprising the image cell and it's accompanying Effects controls, there is no screen refresh abnormality, so long as one of two following instances are true: 1) Cursor is moved outside of the Gallery Grid Cells, or; 2) Cursor is moved to the Gallery Grid Image touched by the left vertical or left bottom horizontal of the Effects Controls. In condition 2 this is often the second image to the left of the one currently showing the Effect Controls.

[MusicLaw Profile]

SPE's coding seems to be handling screen rewrites in a sort of always on top method. Whilst not grabbing WinXP window focus, it is writing to the screen in somewhat strange ways. This when the SPE application is not the foreground app. Four printscreens are attached in an attempt to demonstrate the point.

The first shows SPE in the background while the Forums are the active application window. Nonetheless, by movning cursor for a brief moment off the active Forum window onto the background SPE application, SPE will instantly display the flyout panel.

ScreenShot.jpg001.jpg (137.03 KiB) Viewed 7742 times

The second photo shows how the flyout responds when the cursor remains on one of it's items. Notice the lighter gray item in the flyout panel.

ScreenShot.jpg002.jpg (71.53 KiB) Viewed 7742 times

The third photo shows the similar response when the cursor is moved from the active Forum window onto any one of the right side Effects items or tools.

ScreenShot.jpg003.jpg (92.29 KiB) Viewed 7742 times

The final photo shows the only exception to all the above! This is when the cursor is moved over the Favorite Effects button on the right side. Then and only then does SPE respond in a normal fashion where its screen write takes place behind the currently active Forums window (IE8). [Note: See next post in this thread as 3 attachment photos are the limit.]

[MusicLaw Profile]

This is the fourth screen capture:

ScreenShot.jpg004.jpg (33.54 KiB) Viewed 7742 times

[admin]

We've managed to reproduce the screen flash issue here, so we're looking into it.

[MusicLaw Profile]

Very good!

As you can now readily see, this single issue significantly impedes browsing through the multitudes of Effects.

It is akin to nails on a black board.

[admin]

The XP flashing bug has been fixed and the release is now available on the website.

[MusicLaw Profile]

Very Nice!

Downloading now via the in program: Help > Check for Updates.

[MusicLaw Profile]

Downloaded and overwrote the prior version of the SmartPhotoEditorSetup.exe file.

Ran the file and it apparently installed w/o any incident. However, nothing happened beyond that. The installer was instruced to install it to my same (non-default) installation location: K:\Smart Photo Editor directory.

The Desktop Icon is now gone! Trying to launch the pgm results in a Missing Shortcut list error with Windows displaying the animated flashlight trying to find the program.

Control Panel > Add Remove Programs no longer has an entry for the program!?

Will try running the installer again.