Problems (bugs) with config screens

[PCPete]

G'day all,
I'm evaluating UE for use on my x64 box. So far, it beats all other readers by far - faster, more configurable, more FUN!

But I have a problem on my 2 evaluation systems, XP32 and XP x64.

In the config screens (Newsgroups, Servers, Post pages) many buttons are not drawn properly, they are hidden underneath the text boxes.

I think there might be many more controls that I can't see, but I don't know!

Can you help to solve this problem please? It's very annoying, because I can't see what the buttons do (although I think I know what they are because of their position, but I'm not sure).

Here are 3 shots : (fingers crossed this works) :

and

and


I also have a lot of difficulty setting the background colour of various screen elements (for example, the message list, when I open the colours dialog, there is no colour specified for the UNSELECTED background colour, so it looks horrible).

Apart from these minor bugs, I really like UE, and if we can get these little things fixed, I will be happy to buy the software I think!

Kind regards,
Peter
P.S. If you need ANYTHING - data files, logs, hardware details, configs, just ask.

[Josef K]

The buttons beneath the dropdown lists are intentionally blank. They're used as option buttons so you can selectively pick which column items you would like to copy/paste into other items in the list.

However, you seem to be missing three buttons on the Servers tab, below Preference, Msg-id direct and Get headers.

When you say unselected background colour, I assume you mean items that aren't selected in the list of headers. You can change Edit->Font & Colours->Headers->Bgr. You've probably tried this, in which case I'm not sure I know which area you mean. A screenshot indicating this would help.

P.S. I run UE in x64, previously x86 and UE works perfectly well in either version, though it needs getting used to.

[PCPete]

Thanks Josef, that does explain a bit!

I think I've figured out the background colour issue. Briefly, when a message list pane contains a mixture of selected and unselected items, and the focus is moved away from that pane (by opening the fonts dialog, for example) the background of the selected and unselected items defaults to an unspecified colour, and it is not configurable in the fonts/colours dialog.

You can set the foreground colours for selected and unselected read and unread items (and inline and etc), but only the UNselected background colour is configurable.

It seems that UE tries to pick a reasonable "inverted" colour (or maybe it's using one of the Windows control colours by default?) and it doesn't work on the system I'm using. So I found that when I specified a non-default colour for the header background item, the resulting "unselected background" colour in the message header pane became much nicer.

Thanks also for the description of the buttons, after a few hours playing around seriously, I could see that they acted as toggle/state buttons, but I didn't make the connection to the cut/paste buttons. So it's RTFM for me...

I'm REALLY enjoying playing around with UE. I haven't been on usenet news for over 10 years, so the technology has moved on a lot (last time I posted regularly, I used Windows 95 and SCO Unix).

I agree, UE seems to be quite happy on the XP x64 system, and while it's more complicated than most of the other newsreaders, I can see how the server/newsgroup mechanism is just so flexible, and I can tailor that functionality for my more limited use. But UE beats the pants off ALL other newsreaders I've evaluated in the last week, both by speed and by the amazing flexibility. I don't mind spending a bit more time setting things up if it means less work as I come to need all the features!

And I REALLY like the ability to use aliases for the servers and groups, and nice touches like the fast UI themes. So far, so good... (no showstoppers).

I'll get back to the help pages and see if I can figure out why the window control metrics are out of whack on this system...

[Josef K]

Briefly, when a message list pane contains a mixture of selected and unselected items, and the focus is moved away from that pane...

Oh, I know what you mean now. I get around this by clicking on a scrollbar to make the focus more visible. I could click any of the headers to get focus back again but then I'd lose where I was in the list. The problem here being that you have to refocus the pane, not just the header, so clicking a scrollbar around the header pane will do it. I prefer the muted 'silver/grey' look to all my backgrounds (bright white hurts my eyes when I have to spend all day on a computer) so I set it to match, for example, the standard Windows menu bar. I know how you can forget where you were in this way when the focussed item becomes almost transparent, matching the background.

...I didn't make the connection to the cut/paste buttons. So it's RTFM for me...

Good luck with that... Alex is a programmer in the truest sense: He writes great software but not great documentation. I hope he won't mind me saying this but he knows better than anyone that there are some barely or non-documented features in UE that need better explaining.

I agree, UE seems to be quite happy on the XP x64 system, and while it's more complicated than most of the other newsreaders, I can see how the server/newsgroup mechanism is just so flexible, and I can tailor that functionality for my more limited use. But UE beats the pants off ALL other newsreaders I've evaluated in the last week, both by speed and by the amazing flexibility. I don't mind spending a bit more time setting things up if it means less work as I come to need all the features!

You could think of UE as a giant macro that you can spend ages on perfecting to get it just right. Then after that, you barely need to touch it except for a tweak here and there. Yes, it is more complicated but, then again, it's much more powerful and there's only more to come. Sometimes I think of something and apply it and it changes the whole way I use UE. I like that whole getting my hands dirty feeling because the reward is not a dumbed-down automatic process because you're in complete control of every step. It means if something doesn't work just how you like it, then change it.

I'll get back to the help pages and see if I can figure out why the window control metrics are out of whack on this system...

Unless Alex tweaks the focus issue you can either try my scrollbar click workaround or maybe another combination of shades.

There are a couple of other places with more reading matter available here and here.