DonationCoder.com Software > LaunchBar Commander
My experience with LBC
songless:
Hello,
I know LBC since 2007 and I've tried it several times since then but always I had strange issues with autohiding docks so I never used it for more than one day.
Now after looking the great screencasts I have used it for some days in two machines, PC with Windows 7 x64 and netbook with Windows 7 x32. The result is that I'm very impressed with drag&drop implementation and the flexibility to design bars with tool buttons, menus and so on, but I continue to get strange issues with bar's visibility.
I have tried to reproduce the issues in a logical and repeatable way but I can't, the more recurrent problem is that the bar I have configured to the left side of screen doesn't appear, and the other problem is that sometimes a invisible window appears in my taskbar and alt+tab list, if I click it nothing happens ( I have tray icon option marked ):
I use software like Deskpins, Dexpot or Sandboxie that probably interferes with LBC. With Dexpot is very curious, when I change active desktop and go back to the first there is an empty area in the desktop reserved to the bar but the bar is hidden so the area is empty and the other windows are aligned to that empty space. The visible launchbar is a second bar that is aligned to the space reserved for the autohiding first bar.
To solve the problem I open the LBC configuration dialog and then close, all is reconfigured.
My personal opinion ( that probably is wrong ) is that LBC uses COM to create docks that are managed by Explorer Shell, like when you create a toolbar by right click at taskbar -> toolbars -> new toolbar and select a folder path, and surely there are differences between each Windows version ( so LBC wouldn't run with BlackBox or Emerge in place of Explorer shell but I haven't tried ).
If the visibility problems come from creating 'Windows toolbars', wouldn't be possible to create normal windows like other software do ( PowerPro or bbIconBox in bbLean shell ) ?
I read this in RUnit's webpage ( btw very nice to make a help page with links to other launchers ):
http://www.magister-lex.at/RUNit/index.html
"how does RUNit detect the mouse click?
when not running in "whole screen mode", RUNit creates a window at the edge of the screen.
the window is created with the extended style WS_EX_TRANSPARENT, so you usually don't see much of it.
CreateWindowEx(WS_EX_ACCEPTFILES|WS_EX_TRANSPARENT|WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW, szAppName, szTitle, WS_POPUP, 0,0, iScreenWidth,1, NULL, NULL, hInstance, NULL);
so "detecting" the mouse click is nothing more than processing the WM_RBUTTONDOWN message in this case"
--- End quote ---
I suppose that with autohiding docks the event would be WM_MOUSEOVER or something similar. My point is that RUnit's method works perfect because it only depends on core Win32 Windows functions that work the same between all versions.
Leaving this topic usability of the program is excellent, I configured a very useful bar in minutes with drag&drop. And man I've tried many launchers ( freeware and shareware ).
If someone has some trick to maintain autohiding bar on top ( I don't like visible bars that reduce workspace ) I would be glad to hear, some hotkey that reconfigures the app, ...
mouser:
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
In the past LBC used to be a bit flakey regarding autohide but it seems to be quite stable with some changes i made several months ago.
It sounds to me like the problems may be related to dexpot or other tools that mess with the desktop.. I think the first thing that would be really helpful is if you could try using LBC without these, and let me know if in fact it is the case that it's only when running with one of those that LBC acts up. Then at least i would be able to try to reproduce it.
The other thing you could try it to configure a hotkey for your launchbar and have it show only when you hit the hotkey.
songless:
I have tried in my netbook ( Windows 7 32bits ) without any relevant software running ( only the typical Windows services and Intel stuff for netbooks ) and the bar keep disappearing. I tried to save a screencast but was a failure, sorry.
My test was to open a folder in Windows explorer and open an instance of Internet Explorer and begin to maximize/restore/maximize/restore/change window/maximize/restore... until I can't see the border of autohiding bar, after some seconds the border dissapear, I put the cursor on the left and nothing appears. Then I restore both windows and the border is visible again at the desktop.
This test is very difficult to reproduce with consistency.
Another test was to open a image in full screen mode with FastStone Image Viewer and here always the bar dissapear. If I close the image and go to LBC's context menu->Fixup OnTop Status and then open again a imagen in full screen mode the bar dissapear again. I have the doubt if there is some setting for full-screen apps ( I mean, if it's the expected behavior ) but I haven't seen anything.
Last test, like you suggested I set a hotkey with "toggle dock instead of showing popup menu". Success, the bar always shows even with full-screen image.
This is interesting, probably I can associate for example a StrokeIt's mouse gesture for show the launchbar with hotkey action, I'm going to try and see if it works.
Thanks and regards !
mouser:
I have tried in my netbook ( Windows 7 32bits ) without any relevant software running ( only the typical Windows services and Intel stuff for netbooks ) and the bar keep disappearing. Another test was to open a image in full screen mode with FastStone Image Viewer and here always the bar dissapear.
--- End quote ---
LBC detects full screen applications like screensavers and movies, and will completely hide itself in this case.
It sounds like perhaps this is being triggered for you when it shouldn't be.
One possibly easy fix is to make this an option you can turn off. Would you be interested in testing that if i added that option?
songless:
Yes I am very interested, that fix sounds promising for my case.
I have seen that when in full-screen mode I invoke the hotkey ( now with a mouse gesture, working nicely :) ) the taskbar shows too, I mean the launchbar seems integrated with explorer shell so probably some setting I have for taskbar ( at rightclick->properties dialog ) is affecting LBC. I have autohide disabled, small icons enabled and "block taskbar" disabled.
I'm going to play with the options a bit.
One important thing I forgot in previous message, hotkey works if "Delay on Unhiding" option is disabled.
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