Move/resize gestures ignored by Microsoft Excel (and other non-standard window apps)

[adamm]

Love the app, and works exactly as expected everywhere, except on Microsoft Excel on Office 365

Mac OS: 10.14.4
Hummingbird: 2.0.0(3) bc3358d
Microsoft Excel: v16.24

What's interesting is that it works fine on Microsoft Word, Microsoft Teams, Powerpoint, etc. Just Excel doesn't honour the move/resize gestures.

[finestructure]

Sorry for the very late reply - for some reason my notifications were turned off :/

I'm afraid there's probably not much I can do about this. In rare cases windows seem to be elusive. I don't have Excel to test this further but if you come across any other windows for apps that I could try this with, please let me know.

Also, have you tried changing the modifier keys? I'm wondering if perhaps Excel is capturing some of them in a weird way preventing Hummingbird from activating.

[adamm]

No worries :)

I can confirm other Move modifier keys have the same problem. However, I see all the Resize modifiers do work with Excel. Odd.

If I find another program with the same behavior, i'll update this issue log.

[finestructure]

Mmm, that's bizarre. And I'm sure you've swapped the modifiers between move/resize, i.e. the set that's working for Resize isn't working for Move.

In that case the only thing I can think of is that there's something particular about the window that makes it unresizeable. Although move and resize are using the same APIs - I would expect them both to behave the same...

I have come across some other app in the past that wouldn't respond to moves or resizes but I can't recall right now which one it was. Certainly not one I use on a regular basis.

I'll see if I can get my hands on Excel to inspect what the window handling code does.

[finestructure]

Ok, I've had a look now and it's quite bizarre. It does work, sometimes. The key seems to be to initiate the first Hummingbird move/resize near the toolbar menu. After that, the window can be move/resized as normal:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0qHrtLWeH5SRyHnGt4FxDhqmw#Screen_Recording_2019-10-25_at_13.57

[adamm]

Interesting. I tried to replicate your video (I even set my Move hotkeys to Ctrl+Fn) and I can confirm the toolbar works as expected, but when i go back to the main spreadsheet it still doesn't move. One can assume that Microsoft is probably doing something funky with the rendering layer that's causing interference.

I found another program that has the same issue. System Preferences
On all preferences windows, the hotkey on the toolbar moves the window just fine, but on some of them, using the hotkey on the body of the window does not.

General: Fails
Desktop & Screensaver: Fails
Dock: Works
Mission Control: Works
Language & Region: Works
Security & Privacy: Fails
Spotlight: Works
Notifications: Fails
...
Trackpad: Works
Printers & Scanners: Fails

Clearly there is some sort of UI object used on these windows that is conflicting with Hummingbird.

Hope this helps!

[finestructure]

Yes, I've actually noticed that myself before and I suspect it's because of security context.

Hummingbird is using the Accessibility APIs to read and modify window geometry. There are other things the Accessibility APIs allow you to do and I believe any particularly critical controls completely opt out of the mechanism even if you grant the accessibility permissions.

Regarding Excel: my video test didn't work 100% of the time. There were definitely cases where the menu bar "trick" didn't allow subsequent move/resize of the main window. Really weird.

I'm hoping to take a closer look this week!

[finestructure]

I don't see any way to fix this, I'm afraid. Excel windows seem to be playing by their own rules and I can't figure out how to get a handle on them to trigger move/resize.

[vaclavhanzl]

Aquamacs is another app which does not move/resize. When I try to move/resize Aquamacs, some other window is move/resized instead, so I guess that it is somehow undiscovered in the list of windows HB considers. Setting different modifiers does not matter. Also, trying with pointer at titlebar also does not work.
I'd be happy to help with this somehow, otherwise HB is a lifesaver for me. I had to switch from Linux to Mac and I found window management really painful. HB mostly saved me but Aquamacs is important in my work and not being able to move it spoils the joy.
I am quite experienced programmer on Linux, new to Mac but I already did first hacks to fix things driving me crazy on Mac (End key going to end of document instead of end of line, no normal way to make truly global shortcut to run a terminal etc.) and I considered writing something like HB but fortunately found it exists already (thanks!!!). So I am willing to invest some effort into fixing HB on Aquamacs.

[vlad-cotfas]

(End key going to end of document instead of end of line, no normal way to make truly global shortcut to run a terminal etc.)

For keyboard remaping you can try Karabiner (you can also assing keys to execute scripts)

[vaclavhanzl]

Thanks @cotfas , I already solved all my key-related itches with 100 lines of C code, this way I have full control :) Fixing HB for Aquamacs is my only pain left uncured...

[finestructure]

Hey @vaclavhanzl , thanks for reporting the issue with Aquamacs! To be honest, I'm not that surprised there are issues. There seem to be a few apps that don't use standard windows and therefore bypass the detection method.

I'm currently at a loss as to how to fix it. I've just pushed a branch were I added more detailed error logging when detection failed but as I recall (it's been a while since I looked at it) there was no rhyme or reason for why it's failing.

If you'd like to take a stab at it and manage to solve that puzzle that'd be fabulous! :)