topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Thursday April 18, 2024, 8:18 am
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: tar.Grid - a modern GridMove approach  (Read 1796 times)

tar

  • Participant
  • Joined in 2022
  • *
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 1
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
tar.Grid - a modern GridMove approach
« on: November 05, 2022, 10:29 PM »
Hi,

after having used GridMove for several years, I recently experienced some strange issues with it where it regularly stopped working and resets the selected grid, etc. It became so annoying that I decided to write my own "little" grid app:

Website: https://www.mars-sa.de/software.php#targrid
Download: https://www.mars-sa.de/files/tar.Grid_v1.0_x86_(portable).zip

It is written in C# and some functionalities of GridMove are missing, at the moment:
- no templates ("profiles")
- no keyboard shortcuts or other mouse buttons besides the middle mouse button
- no options for particular window hook areas
- no option to ignore particular windows

But it has its main functionality (drag a window via the middle mouse button) and some other advantages:
- completely portable 32 bit application (no installer, just one .exe)
- simple grid item management (add, edit and remove new trigger and target areas via mouse within a scaled monitor frame instead of text editing)
- each trigger area has its own color
- define texture (hatchstyle), alphalevel and font size of trigger and target areas
- enable or disable border, filling and id for trigger and target areas
- switching it off and on again via a single click on the tray icon
- possibility to display the mouse hook and window information

Besides the mentioned things missing there are 1-3 main issues that bother me:
- (windowed) fullscreen applications
- games
- any app which steals the mouse hook

At the moment, I am not sure how I can distinguish between real fullscreen applications and maximized windows on monitors where the taskbar is hidden as (when window shadows are disabled) the window area is equal to the screens working area which is equal to the screens bounds. If I found no other solution, I likely will implement a check that prevents the grid display when the window area is equal to the screens bounds and live with it. How is GridMove preventing this?

Furthermore, I don't know how I could check if the middle mouse button is pressed inside a windowed game for which usually the middle mouse button serves a game function (e.g. a weapon switch or something). Herefore, I think, only the "ignore particular window" function could help as GridMove does not provide any other solution for this.

I think, both workarounds are not too complex and will soon be implemented in v1.01 but I would like to find a more stable solution in the long run.

Last, there still is an issue with apps that steal the mouse hook (e.g. VMware Workstation). While GridMove did not work here, at all, tar.Grid sometimes does and sometimes not. Not sure, if the issue is the mouse hook or something else.

I would appreciate if you would test or even regularly use my little app and look forward for your feedback.