small screens

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startz
Non-normality and collinearity are NOT problems!
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:25 pm

small screens

Postby startz » Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:01 pm

EViews developers shouldn't be allowed to use large screens.

EViews has real windowing problems when used on a laptop sized screen. Here's a picture.
Capture.PNG
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Note two things that are wrong.

First, the series is 100 long. But the last observation is hidden and so is the handle on the series window scroll bar. There doesn't appear to be any way to get to the last observation. (I recognize you can use the master window scroll bar to get to the bottom of the series window, though then you can't see the top.)

Second, the title bar of the window is under the command pane. That means one can't even grab the window and easily move it around.

Let me tell you, this is a real pain when teaching a class using a laptop hooked to a projector.

I recognize that parts of this are not exactly a "bug," but rather come from what some of the Microsoft code is doing. Nonetheless, it doesn't work well. Some of this arises from the decision a couple of releases ago to switch the multiple window interface.

So some work-arounds would be appreciated. Both in maybe some better behaved code and in some suggestions for how to get around these problems as a user. As a specific suggestion, when EViews opens a new window the whole window should be visible. (This is especially important for graphs.) If I want a window that I can't see all of then I should resize, rather than the other way around.

EViews Steve
EViews Developer
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Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:00 pm
Location: Irvine, CA

Re: small screens

Postby EViews Steve » Mon Sep 26, 2016 7:51 am

There are a few suggestions I can make:

First, you can shorten the height of the command window.

Second, you can "unpin" the command window so it pops in and out whenever you need it by un-clicking the pin icon in the top right of the command window. This will let you use more of the screen, but easily bring up the command window whenever you need it (just mouse over the command tab that should still be visible when the window is scrolled out of view).

example02.png
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Third, you can dock the command window somewhere else, say on the left or the right side of the screen. Since the screen is wider than tall, this could work well for what you want to do. To move the command window, make sure it's pinned (unmoving), then grab the command tab and drag it to one of the sides.

example.png
example.png (65.1 KiB) Viewed 5635 times


Fourth, you can "float" the command window instead of having it docked -- just grab the command tab and drag it out of the frame. You can place the floating window even outside the main EViews window if you wish.

example03.png
example03.png (192.69 KiB) Viewed 5635 times


Steve

startz
Non-normality and collinearity are NOT problems!
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:25 pm

Re: small screens

Postby startz » Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:21 am

Steve,

These are very helpful suggestions. Appreciated. They'll make a noticeable improvement in teaching. (You should get to keep your big screen. The "G" guys I'm less sure of.)

However, I think it is still a design flaw to open a graph view that can't be seen entirely. I guess this may be hard to get around, since the window size was probably chosen before the the switch to a graph view.

There appears to be what is definitely a bug in that you can pull a series window up under the master window in such a way that you can no longer grab the title bar. So you can't pull it back down. I suspect something is off by a few pixels somewhere.

It's nice to be able to drag the command window outside the master window. Why not let us do the same for other windows then?

EViews Gareth
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Re: small screens

Postby EViews Gareth » Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:23 am

As an aside, both the "G" guys use EViews on a Surface Pro, which is a pretty small screen. And this "G" uses EViews to teach on a small laptop hooked up to a projector on a regular basis.
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startz
Non-normality and collinearity are NOT problems!
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:25 pm

Re: small screens

Postby startz » Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:30 am

The fact that you may be more talented at this than I am is neither here nor there :) Heck, I could tell you (totally fictional) stories about when I used to use EViews on an abacus.

I'm teaching with a Surface Pro 4, Windows 10 anniversary edition. Bizarrely, EViews started double-spacing in the command window. I checked this like 10 times. But when I restarted EViews the problem disappeared. So I haven't reported it.

EViews Steve
EViews Developer
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Location: Irvine, CA

Re: small screens

Postby EViews Steve » Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:38 am

The graph view being too large for the window is an issue -- but, like you said, I'm not sure how we would solve it. I'd rather not resize a window for each different view you select...

About the drag "bug", I don't think it's actually a bug. There's no way to drag a window's title bar completely under a docked command window area and then not be able to drag it back, at least with my testing. There might only be a single pixel left to drag, but it's there. Let me know if you can create a situation where you can't drag it back.

By the way, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can't drag a window, just reset the whole window layout by going to Window menu/Cascade or Tile to reset all child window positions.

At some point, we did have a version of EViews running as SDI instead of MDI -- this allowed all windows to appear separately from the frame and the frame defaulted to being just large enough for the title and menu bar. I don't remember why but we decided to not include this view option for EViews 9 but we should probably reconsider it for the next version of EViews. Or were you thinking we should add the ability to "dock" workfile and object windows?

startz
Non-normality and collinearity are NOT problems!
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:25 pm

Re: small screens

Postby startz » Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:55 am

You're probably right that there is one pixel left. It's very hard to select. I'd force there to be several pixels, unless this is some kind of Windows standard.

I would definitely favor going back to SDI. (Or if the code exists for both offering the user an option.) That's what Microsoft Word does, which I think makes it a good model.

EViews Steve
EViews Developer
Posts: 788
Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:00 pm
Location: Irvine, CA

Re: small screens

Postby EViews Steve » Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:13 am

By the way, Jason just pointed out that when the title bar is down to 1 pixel length, you can always just scroll the master scrollbar "up" so that it brings the whole title bar into view again.

startz
Non-normality and collinearity are NOT problems!
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2008 2:25 pm

Re: small screens

Postby startz » Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:15 am

A good point.


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