Minor full-screen annoyances

[shorn]

I have been making a lot of use of the full-screen mode (which I love, by the way, I have several programs that offer this but Scrivener is really the first one I have used intensively, and full screen makes a big difference).

But, I find that when I reach the bottom of the screen, if I have to click a couple of words back for any reason, the full screen control panel pops up and gets in the way. I end up have to click somewhere else and use the cursor keys.

Could there be an "exclusion zone" at the bottom so that the text scrolls up just before actually reaching the control panel area? (The control panel would still remain hidden until you moused over it.)

Another minor full screen point, but this may have been mentioned already: the ability to set a preferred full screen font %. Everywhere else I work with 12 point text, but full screen I always bump it up to 125%.

[janra]

I've run into that too :-)

It's way too easy to accidentally hit the bottom edge of the screen when trying to click on the bottom row of text. I'm not sure what the best way to fix it is, though - full screen *does* mean the whole screen! Maybe have the little control centre on the side of the screen like the scrollbar is. I've never accidentally activated that.

I've also noticed that when the text is right down to the bottom, I can't read the wordcount on the control panel because it's translucent, which jumbles the word count and story text until they're unreadable. It doesn't help that the two are a similar colour.

-janra

[KB]

The default screen percentage has already been mentioned several times on the forums, and is on the "to do" list (and actually should be fixed in the next beta, as I'm testing it now).

I quite like the control panel behaviour. It is only triggered by the very bottom pixel. In CopyWrite, you can see the top of the control panel, so you know it's there, but I prefer getting it out of the way.

I will, however, make the control panel more opaque, so that you can actually read the text - I admit that is a problem at the moment.
Thanks,
Keith

[markallen]

You could have it so that mouse has to remain stationary on the bottom line for a split second before the control panel appears. This would stop the fact that the mouse bounces along the screen edge, causing the panel to pop up.

Another thing is when the user starts typing again, it should auto-hide the panel. At the moment, if you type with the panel on the screen, nothing happens.

[KB]

That's a good idea about the second delay - I'll do that.

As for hiding the panel when the user starts typing again, I'm not sure about that; the panel becomes the "first responder" when it is revealed - hence its buttons turn blue. Thus the text view doesn't recognise typing. Otherwise, the panel's buttons would have to be grey when it appeared if the text view were to remain first responder.

Hope that makes sense...

[shorn]

I like the idea of the delay, because markallen has it exactly right. If you have scrolled up to look at an earlier paragraph, the mouse bounces off the bottom when you bring the cursor back down and opens the panel. For me the stupid thing is, usually I have left the text cursor at the end anyway, so I could just start to type, but I find it's a reflex to bring the mouse pointer back down manually. A delay should resolve this.

As for hiding the panel again, now you have to click, which means moving a hand off the keys. What about using the ESC key. If the panel is not open, ESC takes you out of full-screen mode. If the panel is open, ESC would close it (and another ESC would take you out of full-screen as usual). What do you think? Or would this be confusing?

[KB]

As for hiding the panel again, now you have to click, which means moving a hand off the keys.

The thing is, if you have the control panel open, you must have taken your hands off the keys anyway - because you had to move the mouse to the bottom to open the control panel in the first place. And using the control panel is entirely controlled by the mouse... So I think it makes a lot more sense to close the panel using the mouse (by clicking elsewhere) because this is how you open it.

As for the delay, I implemented it this morning. There is now a half-second delay, which seems to work nicely.

[markallen]

I thought that I would just mention something about starting to type being what causes the status window to close:

I have only just started looking at programming the Mac (not actually written anything yet). But I have programmed Windows for years. You can redirect windows messages to other windows. So in Windows speak, I would simply SendMessage() the messages WM_KEYDOWN and WM_KEYUP, plus a few others to the editing window (HWND).

I have no idea how that works on the Mac, and I have a promise with myself that I will not do any programming or reaseach for the Mac this month. That happens next month :-). It's all about NanoWriMo in November.

[banfennid]

Discovered something today, and it seems to fit (at least for me) under this topic.

1) Work in Compose View with text at 100%.

2) Switch to full screen mode, adjust text to 125% (or some other size).

3) Switch out of full screen mode without readjusting text percentage.

Text will remain at 125%, as it was in full screen, yet the value in the drop down menu will still say 100%. Must adjust again in the menu itself to get the text to actually change back to the value the menu it claims it is.

Powerbook G4, 1.67 Ghz, 2 GB SDRAM, Tiger 10.4.3, Scrivener 0.1.1b

[KB]

This is part of state-saving, which hasn't been implemented in the version you are using - the same "problem" has been reported on the forum numerous times already. It is "fixed" for the next beta, which will have several improvements to full screen anyway.
Thanks,
Keith

[plb]

Going to add to this thread about full-screen annoyances... have gone through to-do, maybe not carefully enough, but here are some points to consider:

1) Prefs->Full Screen, Text Width doesn't seem to offer custom options for me, can't change from 600. Would like to take a LITTLE more advantage of my wide screen, not too much or it becomes tough to scan.

2) F8 to go into full-screen mode... can that be changed? That's the keyboard backlight-disable key on my PowerBook. You know how these things are, it's hard-coded on the keyboard and may be customizable but...

Thanks

[KB]

Thanks for feedback. To answer:

1) Strange. Text Width should offer custom options, but it may be problematic at present. So the answer is "yes", but it may not work properly until I have finished implemented the Preferences panel properly (currently it is only partly working, and is a low priority relatively speaking - that is, it is essential before release, but not at this early stage of the beta; hope you understand).

2) That is *really* useful, thank you. I had actually been wondering about that. While my iBook was in for repairs recently and I was working on my Mac Mini, I wired up the view menu commands (Binder, Compose etc) to F1-F4. Then, when I got my iBook back, I suddenly realised that these keys were all reserved for brightness and volume, so had to change them. I wondered if the F8 key might be reserved on any systems. So: yes, I will change the shortcuts for the next beta. Probably to Shift-Cmd-F or Alt-Cmd-F to stay in line with Ulysses or CopyWrite.

Thanks!
Keith