Problems with some controls on Win 8 + touch screen

Version: 12.2.0571

Platform: .NET 4.5

Environment: Windows 8 (64-bit)

I should probably post about this, as it's something I noticed. It doesn't really affect me, but it would be useful if I let you guys know.

Some controls have problems on Windows 8 when "Right-handed" is enabled under Tablet PC Settings in Control Panel. This setting causes menus to appear on the left side instead of the right. The reason why this is a probably going to become a bigger problem is that Windows 8 is pushing touch screens, and I've recently had a bunch of new Dell's come in, all with touchscreens--they all have "Right-handed" settings enabled by default.

The contol I noticed with the problem is the "Mini-ToolBar" part of the Ribbon suite. If you open any of the ComboBoxes, the mini-toolbar position jumps far away from the cursor, instead of staying in place. This happens when you right click and attempt to use the toolbar, but not when you highlight text and use the toolbar.

I believe I spotted some other issues, but I don't remember where. I turned this off pretty fast, because menus on the left hand are really annoying, but anyway, I hope this helps.

Comments (3)

Posted 12 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Hi, I'm trying to repro this in our main Document Editor demo but haven't been able to so far. I open it on an English system and on the Ribbon Demos tab click the "Toggle Flow Direction" button. Then I show a mini-toolbar by right-clicking and I show a combo drop-down. I don't see any position changing or anything. Are you able to repro it in that demo? If so, what exact steps do I need to do? Thanks.

Actipro Software Support

Posted 12 years ago by ＼アッカリーン／

Sure, I just happened to be posting another question, so I just saw this. I can reproduce the problem in the demo.

I'm also on an English system, though I do have the Japanese IME installed, but it's set to the English keyboard layout currently and Windows is using English for all the menus/display.

Here's the steps:

1. Win 8 system, VS 2012.

2. Open WPF Studio - Sample Browser

3. Click on the Ribbon Product Family.

4. Click on the "Mini-ToolBar" sample.

5. Right click anywhere in the SyntaxEditor control that's displayed, and then click the dropdown arrow on the Font ComboBox. Behavior should work just fine here. Left click on the SyntaxEditor to get rid of the Mini-ToolBar.

6. Go to Control Panel, open "Tablet PC Settings." (http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/5418/tpcsettings.png)

7. Go to the "Other" tab, and change under Handedness to "Right-handed," and click apply. (http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/5418/tpcsettings.png)

8. Go back to the Sample Browser, and right click on the SyntaxEditor control again to bring up the Mini-ToolBar, then click the down arrow to bring down the list on the Font ComboBox, the control will jump from the original position of the mouse to the left side. (http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/5418/tpcsettings.png) (http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5418/tpcsettings.png)

I just noticed one other thing while making the screen shots above... If you ALT-Tab to go to a different screen while the Mini-ToolBar is open after having left clicked to bring it open, and having clicked on the dropdown arrow, so the focus is on the ComboBox, the ComboBox stays open on top of whatever window you may try to bring in front of it... (http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/5418/tpcsettings.png)

Hopefully I was able to be helpful here. Let me know if you need more information, I tried to be pretty detailed.

Posted 12 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Hi thanks for the repro steps. Unfortunately we don't have that Tablet PC Settings option on our desktop dev machines at this time. We may have to wait until the Surface Pros arrive (hopefully MS releases them in Jan).

For the other issue, you'd probably need to watch your Window's deactivated event and then call MiniToolBarService.Hide().

Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.3) was released 26 days ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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