The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[cc_in_oh]

With my newish PC I've gone from 2 24" FHD monitors to 2 27" QHD. Everything is a little smaller and a little farther away with that setup. Before, I never bothered with the magnifier but now it's lens mode is a worthwhile tool. But [win]+ and [win]esc to turn it on and off seems ridiculously cumbersome when working mostly just with the mouse. Why can't I have a magnifier tool on screen that I can just drag over what I want to magnify, then snap shut when I release the mouse button? I'm not saying replace the current way of using it but add something like this for quick on-and-off use (like reading the tiny clock in the taskbar without spraining my neck)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

With my newish PC I've gone from 2 24" FHD monitors to 2 27" QHD. Everything is a little smaller and a little farther away with that setup. Before, I never bothered with the magnifier but now it's lens mode is a worthwhile tool. But [win]+ and [win]esc to turn it on and off seems ridiculously cumbersome when working mostly just with the mouse. Why can't I have a magnifier tool on screen that I can just drag over what I want to magnify, then snap shut when I release the mouse button? I'm not saying replace the current way of using it but add something like this for quick on-and-off use (like reading the tiny clock in the taskbar without spraining my neck)

Try this for size ==>> Keep your time synchronized with Atomic Time servers, using customizable digital desktop clock.

PS:: there are other magnifiers, but most (all???) are not free.

BR

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Try this for size ==>> Keep your time synchronized with Atomic Time servers, using customizable digital desktop clock.

PS:: there are other magnifiers, but most (all???) are not free.

BR

I used to have a nice clock in the Firefox toolbar (FF is open all day) but lost it in "quantum".

Actually that's another rant - FF is way to sensitive to moving tabs to a new window - I rarely want to do that but it seems to happen accidentally at least once a day...

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

With my newish PC I've gone from 2 24" FHD monitors to 2 27" QHD. Everything is a little smaller and a little farther away with that setup.

If you are using Win10, look at Start/PC Settings/Display/Scale and Layout. Default scaling is 100%, but you can increase it. 125% might be a solution for your problem.
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Dennis

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Actually that's another rant - FF is way to sensitive to moving tabs to a new window - I rarely want to do that but it seems to happen accidentally at least once a day...

This fixed that for me ==>> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...-tab-detach-2/

BR

[4691mls]

My ancient monitor recently died. it was one of the earlier flatscreen models from around 2004. With the new one, I've had to make all kinds of fiddly adjustments in Outlook in order to get the text big enough to read. I've had to make the same adjustments in each Outlook folder as there doesn't seem to be a universal way to do it. (I tried the Windows "make everything bigger" option but text looked too fuzzy.)

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

This fixed that for me ==>> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...-tab-detach-2/

BR

If it gets too annoying I'll try that but addons can be dodgy.

I don't want to scale up and lose a chunk of real estate. QHD is perfect for Excel and video editing, no need to change Excel default font from the Arial 9 I've always used. So Tbird lives in the NW corner and if it's previewing a small-font message dragging it closer to read is easier than messing with the magnifier. Another factor is my progressive lenses requiring more head movement to focus.

I'm waiting for a sale on a MX Master 3 mouse - then I'll try binding the magnifier to 2 of its buttons to see how that goes. It would be nice if it was a toggle which would only need 1 button...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

If it gets too annoying I'll try that but addons can be dodgy.

Agreed - especially Quantum extensions, I've had to ditch quite a few, they are not as robust as the old extensions.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Agreed - especially Quantum extensions, I've had to ditch quite a few, they are not as robust as the old extensions.

Which have you had to ditch?

I ran an ESR instance of Firefox to continue using existing extensions until Quantum compatible replacements occurred. There is still a hole or two, but for the most part things work.

The issue is that browser development in general is going to an "extensions are pure JavaScript, and must run in a browser sandbox and not affect the underlying machine" model. The good part is that it's possible to write cross-browser extensions that can be install with minor source changed on Chrome, Edge, or FF. The bad part is all the stuff you used to be able to do in extensions and can't anymore.

My current gripe is multiple windows. I have an assortment of things on the bookmark bar I want to open in a new instance, not as tabs in the existing one, like Facebook and Reddit.

I can open stuff in a new Window fine, but what happens when I close both?
Previously, closing the first window also closed the second. Now, close one, the other remains, and must be closed separately. The other one tends to be a second window. When I startup Firefox again, what comes up is the second window, not the main one. I use Tab Session Manager and can restore the other stuff, but having to is a PITA.
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Dennis

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Which have you had to ditch?

An autocopy, a shortlived BBcode, HTML, Markup generator, several RSS gadgets - others I can't recall.

BR

[DMcCunney]

"You are lost in a maze of twisty little Windows corner cases, all different."

I find myself involved in putting on virtual conferences. I'm a long time SFF fan, and help to plan and run literary SF cons. In recent years, my usual role has been managing the platform: I'm the chap that deals with the venue in which the SF con will take place. Queue COVID-19. Until the dust settles and a proven vaccine is available, in person gatherings like that are on hold. So various such events have to pivot and go virtual.

I was on the tech staff for CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention originally intended to be an in-person event held in Wellington, NZ. COVID-19 hit, and NZ went into lockdown. An in-person con wasn't possible. The folks involved had to decide whether to simply cancel and refund everyone's money, or go virtual. They went virtual, but there wasn't enough time to properly do development before the event took place, so some things were still "under construction" as the event happened. And working on it was a science fictional experience because of the International Dateline. It was today here in NYC. It was tomorrow in NZ. (And it led to a number of "Just what do you mean when you say "today?" questions. "Just specify the date and use GMT for the time to avoid confusion.")

So I'm still involved in managing the platform, but it's virtual, defined by software, and largely living ion the cloud. The model used had Zoom for programming, and Discord for social activities, with a few other things to to complete the structure.

When you are trying to manage an event like that, there is no such thing as enough screen real estate. I managed, more or less, during CoNZealand with one big monitor and a 10" Android tablet, by putting different Firefox windows showing different things in Win10 virtual screens, but it was an imperfect solution. Several other SF cons I work on have also had to go virtual, so I needed a second monitor.

Easy enough. My preferred vendor, Micro Center, had an HP monitor similar to the one I already use at a decent price. But how do I connect it? The existing one plugs in via a VGA port, but there's only one on the desktop HP Small Form Factor PC. It does have two DisplayPort ports. But the second HP monitor connects via VGA or HDMI. There is a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, so add it to the shopping list. And the HP desktop has USB3 on the motherboard, which the machine it replaced didn't. As I am getting more USB3 peripherals, add a 7 port powered USB3 hub. And while I'm at it, get a second Sabrent USB3 drive enclosure to go along with the one I have, and I have several 2.5" SATA drives I'd like to connect on occasion.

Bring it all home, and connect it all up. Almost everything works. The second monitor is seen and used (though there is a 5 second or so delay before it activates and shows content. Not a problem, as it's a one time boot event.)

The 7 port USB Hub works - until I try to plug in the second Sabrent enclosure. I get an "insufficient USB resources to start the device" error. It doesn't matter if I plug it in the USB3 hub or directly into a motherboard USB port. That's...different. I thought I'd collected a complete set of Win10 error messages from previous adventures, but I ran into a limit I wasn't aware of.

One of the other efforts I went through was consolidating flash drives. I had several lower capacity USB2 drives I wanted to consolidate onto a larger one. Doing so let me remove four USB 2 drives from the existing 7 port USB2 hub. Hmmmm. I wonder if that freed up enough USB resources to let me plug in the second Sabrent enclosure? It did, and things work. Win10 thinks I have ten drives attached. One of those is the System partition for one of the other drives, and will get hidden. The rest are three internal drives, two drives in drive enclosures, and three USB flash drives.

Things are working as desired, but getting there has been a bit of an adventure.

And HelpdeskGeek has a good post talking about USB resources:
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/h...on-windows-10/

"Oh, no! Not another learning experience!"
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Dennis

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And HelpdeskGeek has a good post talking about USB resources:
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/h...on-windows-10/

"Oh, no! Not another learning experience!"
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Dennis

So, as that article describes the problem and fix, it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Windows or Windows 10? If the issue resides with USB2 and USB3 themselves, would Unix or Mac machines have similar issues? (in your opinion, at least?)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

So, as that article describes the problem and fix, it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Windows or Windows 10? If the issue resides with USB2 and USB3 themselves, would Unix or Mac machines have similar issues? (in your opinion, at least?)

In this case, the issue was specifically Windows USB support, and apparently this is not specific to Win10, and I could have hit the limit on Win7, or Win8.1 (which I avoided.)

I don't have a Mac to test on, and don't currently dual boot Linux, so I have no idea what it might make of my setup. I assume USB will have resource requirements regardless. I just don't know how Linux deals with them.
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Dennis

[DiapDealer]

High-tech homes on stone-age power grids.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

High-tech homes on stone-age power grids.

Hey....I resemble that remark. I have power lines that are...above the ground!

I win. (ha).

Hitch