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arthoz Offline OP
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Would be nice if the ALT-key could be toggled on and off from the mIRC Options -> Other -> Keys Dialog since its quite annoying :P

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I don't consider this behaviour to be annoying thus far, but I do agree there should be an option to turn this off.


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Hoopy frood
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This is standard windows behaviour regarding the toggling of menus. It happens in just about every windows application with a menubar. Why is it more annoying in mIRC?


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arthoz Offline OP
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Its more annoying because i have it hidden as default, when i press alt, it shows, pushes switchbar down and makes the chatwindow smaller, mIRC is also the most active app im using so whenever i use alt and press it/something else along with altkey by accident more often than not the damn menubar pops up. A show/hide toggle would be the simplest solution, i mean, ive hidden it for a reason =)

Another suggestions for us that hide the menubar, is to make it so that when the alt-key is pressed, the menu when you click the mIRC-icon is shown instead of the menubar, since it contains the menubar entries as well doesnt push the interface around.

Last edited by arthoz; 05/08/10 08:48 AM.
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Hoopy frood
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Have you used the newer version(s) of Windows? They have the exact same behavior in Windows Explorer (if you hide the menu). For that matter, so does the newer version(s) of Internet Explorer and many other programs.

I understand not liking how it pops up and changes the size of the viewing window, but I think it's better in this case to let mIRC behave like most new software that is out that also has a hide menu bar option. Even if older software doesn't have that behavior, mIRC should really follow the current behavior. It's better to have all programs behave in a similar way rather than having everything do its own thing. And even an option to disable it is "its own thing."

This is one reason why I don't hide the menu bar in the first place. I don't like when it pops up. And at 1650x1080, that very small space that it takes up isn't a problem. I have plenty of space for the main area of the program. As such, I don't hide the menu bar in any programs or in Windows.


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Hoopy frood
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I have my menu hidden by default and I don't find it annoying. As mentioned, this behaviour is also the same as other standard Windows programs like IE, Firefox (with hidden menubar addons), Windows Explorer, and others. Given that hitting ALT is the only way to show the menubar when it is hidden, I don't think disabling it would serve users all that well. Khaled has been trying to simplify the options dialogs and remove as many extraneous options as possible, I don't think adding in an extra option like this would really jive with that.

Presumably you've hidden the bar because you don't want to see it when you're not using it, not because you don't want to use it. There is lots of functionality that exists exclusively in the menubar and that you will likely need at one time or another, so the point of hiding the menubar is not to disable it, it is to "hide" it when it is not used.

Note that the menubar only pops up when you hit ALT and release it with no other keys depressed. That's not really something that should happen often. Given the placement of the ALT key, it's hardly even something that should happen accidentally.


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arthoz Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: arthoz

Another suggestions for us that hide the menubar, is to make it so that when the alt-key is pressed, the menu when you click the mIRC-icon is shown instead of the menubar, since it contains the menubar entries as well doesnt push the interface around.


I see you both ignored this bit of the text, now, not every app displays a menuBAR when you press alt, Opera(and firefox 4 i believe) for instance has it coming as a menu to the top-right side as i suggested, also my explorer ive disabled it popping up, cause i find it annoying, rest of apps i either cant hide the menubars or they are always active cause i am using them. If i hide them i _extremely_ rarely use them and is the reason why i have hidden them.


Originally Posted By: Riamus2
It's better to have all programs behave in a similar way rather than having everything do its own thing. And even an option to disable it is "its own thing."


Which is why my suggestions i to keep it like other programs, but with an simple option to turn the alt-keying off and make it less annoying, i mean menu items are still available from the mircicon anyhow.



Also argv0, everyone is not perfect like you and never mispresses keys and/or rarely use alt(&windows keys) =)

Last edited by arthoz; 05/08/10 09:50 PM.
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Hoopy frood
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Firefox 4 does popup the menubar when you hit ALT. As does a plethora of other programs I mentioned. The ones that don't (like Opera) don't use standard menubars. mIRC does. Windows Explorer does. Firefox does. IE does. It's standard behaviour. mIRC tries to maintain standard UI behaviour so as to not confuse users, I think this is reasonable. As I mentioned, Khaled is also attempting to reduce the amount of options for various aesthetic/non-functional aspects of the program, as they become hard to maintain, introduce bugs and complicate the options UI.

I wasn't suggesting that you *never* mispress keys (in fact I explicitly stated that it would happen), I simply said that it should be rare enough. Given how minor the visual difference is when the alt button is pressed, I think this entire topic is being drastically overplayed.


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Glad I'm not the only one who find this annoying.
As mentioned already most windows apps behave this way, (menu bar is activated even if not hidden).

mIRC is the type of application where you sit around waiting, either for a reply, or similar situations, doing so I tend to get fidgety and sometimes hit alt. In other situations it's hit by accident. Whenever I do the menu bar (which I never use) pops up, making the window bounce around and such. Half of the time hitting escape does not close it again so you have to alt tab or grab the mouse to get it to go away.

I'm not saying this is a huge problem, but whenever it happens I think about reverting to 6.35 and get annoyed. I doubt it would be a huge issue to make it a option.

I don't see how a extra checkbox would be a problem, but if it is, make it accessible only trough the mIRC.ini file. *shrug*

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Fjord artisan
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Originally Posted By: arthoz
I see you both ignored this bit of the text, now, not every app displays a menuBAR when you press alt, Opera(and firefox 4 i believe) for instance has it coming as a menu to the top-right side as i suggested, also my explorer ive disabled it popping up, cause i find it annoying, rest of apps i either cant hide the menubars or they are always active cause i am using them. If i hide them i _extremely_ rarely use them and is the reason why i have hidden them.


Move to MacOS X. And yes I am serious. MacOS has always had one menubar standard... something that everyone agree's is a better UI design. Windows UI is very lacking in many areas. So either move to MacOS X or find a way to live with this.

Last edited by MeStinkBAD; 14/08/10 11:08 AM.

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