Colouring lessons
This screenshots gallery generally relates to screenshots of graphical interfaces. The fundamental nature of a graphical interface is colouring in the screen with lots of pretty pixels. And for some reason, we still cannot seem to even get that much to work reliably…
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 for Windows must be the only program where you can convince it to leave the scroll bar marked as page up or down and both scroll buttons pressed. Or whatever it draws them in inverse video for.
Somehow, Firefox, while maximised, managed to spontaneosly put its window up underneath my taskbar as though I’d pressed F11 but the taskbar was still visible. Guessing I’d hit F11 by mistake, I tried pressing F11 to get it to restore my window. And ended up with its title bar and the taskbar mangled together. Trying to determine what exactly I was looking at, I clicked on the taskbar, only to find that I could drag it – the Firefox window that is – around with the taskbar still “stuck” to it.
For some reason, our Access/Jet-based database program seems to implement its own drop-down boxes. It’s not like Windows hasn’t had a common controls library since goodness knows when. I imagine some of you will remember the whole CTL3D.DLL deal from Windows 3. Anyhow, if you switch window with one of these fake controls left open (because it hangs for ages thinking about what to put in the menu – Jet over SMB rocks) it either won’t close or you are just left with a hole in the window forevermore.
Thankfully we are getting that program rewritten from the ground up.
As well as winning the prize for perhaps the ugliest Mac OS skin ever (no, fear not, there are worse, far worse) this purple ugly doesn’t even draw in properly:
Surely, everyone has seen this one before by now? Character Map’s delight in mangling up character zoom boxes and the scrollbar.
Well… Everyone except Microsoft, for BeleaguredSoft Character Map still doesn’t work properly even in XP. But then, nor does Explorer.
Sometimes it is the little things in life. Like being able to draw in a tab properly. Of course, Excel is another member of the BeleagueredSoft Suite.
I have a control panel on my OS 9.1 Macintosh, called Power Windows. I use it to give me live window dragging. And sometimes, translucent menus. But never to fade open and closed Finder windows, because then you get this:
And this:
Mozilla Firefox is by my reckoning bad enough to join the Beleagured Suite. Here is a completed installation:
