Flashing Taskbar Bug

[craigbrass]

Can I just make clear that Kayako Bug Tracker - Viewing Issue #483 - Task Bar Flashing has been tagged as "Not a bug / Deferred" incorrectly.

No other window does this including WLM / Pidgin windows. Just LiveResponse. It should NOT be doing this and only flashing when a new message is posted.

[Jamie Edwards]

Ryan will explain why this is a Windows issue shortly.

[craigbrass]

I don't see how he is going to do that. It is NOT a Windows issue because it does NOT happen for Windows Live Messenger which basically does the same job as the WinApp.

[John Haugeland]

No other window does this including WLM / Pidgin windows. Just LiveResponse. It should NOT be doing this and only flashing when a new message is posted.

Sorry, on this you aren't correct. Many applications, including Trillian, Pandion, Windows Live Messenger (is that what you meant by WLM?), Microsoft Word in collaboration mode, MSVS Team Edition and so forth do in fact highlight applications with pending known alerts. The reason it isn't flashing is that flashing and stable mean different things.

For reference please see the Microsoft Vista User Experience Guidelines at Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines (this was true of older versions of windows as well; here, for example, are the XP guidelines: The User Interface Guidelines for Microsoft Windows )

This is the result of the WinAPI call to provide default notification. We are doing what the Windows UI guide requires. You can turn off this behavior in your UI settings.

We apologize, but this is in fact Windows standard behavior. Pidgin is simply incorrect.

[craigbrass]

I don't think you understand. I minimize using the minimize button top right and it doesn't flash until a message is received. I tap the app on the taskbar and it keeps flashing. No other app does this.

[bear]

Interesting. In Windows XP, when a program window is trying to notify me, it blinks a few times and then stops. Live response continues to blink until I click inside it. You're saying there's a setting in XP that will change this behavior in Live Response, as it behaves differently from every other application on this computer?

Please, tell me where to do so.

[craigbrass]

I would be happy with it blinking until I maximize it if it just didn't blink on minimizing by clicking the window on the taskbar to minimize it.

[bear]

We may be talking about something slightly different here, Craig. I don't usually minimize the chat window, so I haven't seen that. I was mentioning that it will blink forever until I click inside the window to "focus" it. Then it stops...until the next customer response...if I left it alone, it would do so forever.

[John Haugeland]

Originally Posted by craigbrass

I don't think you understand. I minimize using the minimize button top right and it doesn't flash until a message is received. I tap the app on the taskbar and it keeps flashing. No other app does this.

Every application I listed behaves in this fashion, as it is the Windows HUI standard, sir. Please refer to the aforementioned Microsoft standards documentation if you would like reference.

We cannot control the Windows API, sir.

[John Haugeland]

Originally Posted by bear

Interesting. In Windows XP, when a program window is trying to notify me, it blinks a few times and then stops. Live response continues to blink until I click inside it. You're saying there's a setting in XP that will change this behavior in Live Response, as it behaves differently from every other application on this computer?

Please, tell me where to do so.

Yes, there's a registry hack I found once several years ago that can change the reference behavior on a single Windows installation. Unfortunately I just spent about ten minutes googling for it and was unable to locate it.

If you do find said registry hack, I would appreciate your posting it here, so that we can distribute that to other customers.

[Siora]

Windows Live Messenger and Trillium don't continue to blink, they blink 3 or 4 times and then stay highlighted.

[craigbrass]

Point is that when I hit the taskbar button it blinks regardless of if a message has been received or not Siora. This defeats the object of the flashing.

[Siora]

Originally Posted by craigbrass

Point is that when I hit the taskbar button it blinks regardless of if a message has been received or not Siora. This defeats the object of the flashing.

Wow thats weird. That doesn't even make sense. How can that not be considered a bug.

[Jamie Edwards]

I cannot confirm this problem; can anyone else?

It blinks and continues to blink until I open the chat window, then it stops; it does not start again. This is using Windows Vista.

[craigbrass]

Window
http://www.craigbrass.net/personal/i...308-125220.jpg

Minimise by Clicking Taskbar Window
http://www.craigbrass.net/personal/i...308-125303.jpg