Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop

Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop - Printable Version

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Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop by ahmetgns on 07-01-2008 at 09:50 AM

When I show my desktop by the Show Desktop button in Quick Launch part of Windows taskbar or by the shortcut keys Win Logo + (D) or (M), my maximized tabbed chat restores itself to its previous dimensions.

Also, if I don't have any open conversation window, then someones writes to me, his/her window opens unmaximized, i.e, with its previous dimesions. But if I open a conversation window before any one writes to me, it opens as maximized and remains maximized even if someone writes to me.[edit] I noticed that, the problem in this paragraph is not caused by Messenger Plus!, this is a bug in Messenger itself.[/edit]

Windows XP Service Pack 2 (5.1.2600)
Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1018
Messenger Plus! Live 4.60.0.326

RE: Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop by CookieRevised on 07-01-2008 at 08:33 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ahmetgns
When I show my desktop by the Show Desktop button in Quick Launch part of Windows taskbar or by the shortcut keys Win Logo + ( D) or ( M), my maximized tabbed chat restores itself to its previous dimensions.

I think you explained it wrong. Since, if you do exactly as explained here, the bug wont happen. In fact, all you would see is your Desktop.

I think what you wanted to explain is(?):

Open a tabbed chat window and maximize it
Press WIN+D or WIN+M
=> Now you will either only see your Desktop window, or you will see your Desktop window behind a few other windows (while most windows are minimized), depeding on what shortcut you used. For more detail, see explaination below.
Now you need to press WIN+D again to restore all normal windows. You can not use WIN+M at this point because WIN+M is not a 'toggle' command, while WIN+D is. Again, see below for detailed explaination of the difference.
=> At this point you will see your tabbed chat window again, but it will be restored to its original size, thus before it was maximized.

...

This 'bug' has also already been reported though...somewhere...
(note the single quotes, since it isn't really a real bug, but more like a limitation/consequence of the way it works)

--------------

[related, but important to understand]

Note that the "Show Desktop" button in Quick Launch (shortcut: Win+D) is not the same as shortcut WIN+M.

The first (WIN+D) puts the desktop window in front of all other windows; it puts the Desktop window as the top-most window. Compare it with what ALT+TAB does for programs.

The second (WIN+M) minimizes only windows which have the minimize setting enabled, you reconize them by the minimize button in the top right corner. It doesn't touch the desktop window.

Thus they both do very different things. Thus also note that your Desktop is actually a window on its own. A window which can be placed in front of other windows (WIN+D). The WIN+D shortcut also toggles between two states (Desktop window in front/Desktop window in background). The WIN+M shortcut does not toggle window states and only does 1 thing (minimize all windows which can be minimized).

---

Second note: a tabbed chat is actually a window controlled by a special hidden Plus! window. This hidden Plus! window can not be minimized nor maximized! What happens when you minimize a tabbed chat window is that the command to minimize the chat window is catched by this special Plus! window and it actually disables the tabbed chat window instead of minimizing it. The very same thing happens when you press on a tab button in a tabbed chat window: it simply disables the current chat window and enables another chat window which was previously disabled, so it does not minimize, restore or shift window z-order positions around.

When you maximize a tabbed chat window, the special hidden Plus! window again catches this and the visible chat window is maximized this time. However, the other chat windows (which are disabled since they aren't the top-most chat) are not maximized, they stay at their original size, disabled.

Also important to know is that the taskbar button you see, when you have tabbed chatting enabled, is not the taskbar button of the current chat window, it is actually the taskbar button of that special hidden window.

---

All this causes some behaviours which you normally wouldn't expect, like:
- When you click on the taskbar button of a minimized tabbed chat (thus which is actually the taskbar button of that hidden Plus! window), that tabbed chat window will be shown immediatly. Normal Windows behaviour for minimized windows in this case is to only show the right click context menu without restoring the window immediatly. This issue was already reported on the forums too...
- 'Wrong' contact names can be shown in the taskbar button in certain cases. Or the button caption doesn't follow the current chat caption.
- A maximized tabbed chat will be restored to his original size when you use the WIN+D shortcut to show the Desktop window and again restoring it to the background.
- And a few other things which all come down to how tabbed chatting internally works.

Also see "Tabbed chats taskbar button and its right click menu BUGS" and a few other threads, for example like: Tabbed Chat Bug, etc...

[/related]

RE: Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop by ahmetgns on 07-07-2008 at 11:57 AM

So, I may be wrong at explaining the problem, you are right. I guessed this is another limitation of tabbed chats but I still wanted to post it because Patchou may find a solution to this even though he couldn't find to some other problems yet. I searched the forum about this but I couldn't find any thing.

quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
When you maximize a tabbed chat window, the special hidden Plus! window again catches this and the visible chat window is maximized this time. However, the other chat windows (which are disabled since they aren't the top-most chat) are not maximized, they stay at their original size, disabled.

But it does the same thing when only one conversation is open too, while tabbed chats are enabled in Plus!. Also if I close the window and reopen any convo window, it is maximized again. I checked the messenger's registry entry "IMWindowMax" after maximizing the window and it was set to 1. So the hidden Plus! window catches the maximize action but it doesn't prevent the original messenger from changing its registry entry accordingly. Whatever, lets see if Patchou can overcome this issue.

I learned the difference between Win+D and Win+M previously from one of your posts already. But I think Win+D doesn't only brings the desktop to the foreground, it also minimizes the minimizable windows too. Because my WLMail program is set to "Hide window when minimized (means hide taskbar button)" and when I use Win+D, its taskbar button disappears and only its systray icon is left. If it wasn't minimized, its taskbar button would not disappear from taskbar ^o)

.

I edited my first post because I noticed that the problem I mentioned in the second paragraph is caused by Messenger itself, not by any feature of Plus!.

RE: RE: Maximized tabbed chat restore itself after showing desktop by CookieRevised on 08-07-2008 at 02:17 AM

quote:
Originally posted by ahmetgns

quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
When you maximize a tabbed chat window, the special hidden Plus! window again catches this and the visible chat window is maximized this time. However, the other chat windows (which are disabled since they aren't the top-most chat) are not maximized, they stay at their original size, disabled.
But it does the same thing when only one conversation is open too, while tabbed chats are enabled in Plus!.

yes, the number of chats doesn't matter. Even if you have only 1 chat open, that special Plus! window is used (when tabbed chats is enabled).

quote:
Originally posted by ahmetgns
Also if I close the window and reopen any convo window, it is maximized again. I checked the messenger's registry entry "IMWindowMax" after maximizing the window and it was set to 1. So the hidden Plus! window catches the maximize action but it doesn't prevent the original messenger from changing its registry entry accordingly. Whatever, lets see if Patchou can overcome this issue

It shouldn't overcome this. What you described here is normal expected and logic behaviour. Whenever you close a chat window, its position, size and state is stored. Whenever you open a new chat window, it is displayed with that same previous position, size and state.

quote:
Originally posted by ahmetgns
But I think Win+D doesn't only brings the desktop to the foreground, it also minimizes the minimizable windows too.

correct.