PDF plugin - mouse-only way to show panels

[Arioch]

I was called to Opera borwser about PDf printing

There is a crash issue
There also was issue that plugin was in English instead of inRussian (how was Opera, Windows and stand-alone PDf Xchange Viewer)
And there was dialog-too-high issue

And one more.

Either occasionally or intentionally but forgotten - all the panels be hidden.
And if one does not remember hotkeys F9 and F11 - there seems no way to come out of it

Just remember how MS Office 2003 implemented special toolbar with only button "close print preview" ? they probably also had similar issue

So what i ask for. In minimal mode of plugin, the only part of UI that is not either browser or document itself, seems to be "papersize" indicator in bottom left corner.
When user right-click onto it it would show some menu.

I ask that:
1) this menu also could be called by left-clicking, not only right-clicking.
2) this menu at top contained actions "Show main menu (F9)" and "Show toolbars (F11)", maybe always or maybe when Main menu / panels were hidden before.

There should be way for mouse-only newb user to recover the hidden panels

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Arioch,

While we do acknowledge that what you describe is possible - and while we have had a few users contact us - it is quite rare that someone manages to hide all his toolbars, and can not remember what they did and how to revert that.

And we are always here to help anyone in trouble, but in any case - I will have a word with our developers to consider this for the future.

Best,
Stefan

[Arioch]

AS. just take any program u use rarely, chaneg some settings, and wait month or two - you would forget what and where you changed


Many users would be hard to even formulate the problem.
Especially if they are not savvy in computers and English.

All they say "i open the page, try to print it and i can not".
ditto.

They'd be hard to

1) find non-native english forum
2) register there in non-native english language
3) formulate the problem in computer-savvy language (to tell the panels are hidden, one would know what panels are and what they must be present)
4) type it in and wait for answer unknown time
5) understand the answer, beeing written in English

The simple obvious button/menu item to undo the hide would be much more obvious and easy


The fact that u has little complains does not necessary mean there is no problem, sometimes it only means the problem is not easy to trck or to report

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello Arioch,

I discussed this with our developers as well, and then advised me that this is also worth considering for a future build, so I made another ticket:
#1159: Viewer FR: A way to access the menus using only the mouse when they are hidden (e.g. by F11)
That will allow us to track this case as well.

I will update the forum topic as soon as there are any news.

Best,
Stefan

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Users should know how to use F1 if they cannot remember anything else.

The context menu is not currently editable and most users don't want any useless clutter on it.
The current 12 items are all sensible choices.

The paper size toolbar is also useless in most cases, and should be removable too.

The paper size could be shown on the document properties dialogue.

[Arioch]

okay, i open http://www.samplepdf.com/sample.pdf
i press F1
it opens http://help.opera.com/Windows/11.50/ru/index.html

where should it tell me, how to show panels of the viewer ?

[Jamie - Tracker Supp]

Please be civil on our forums. I have tested the F1 function in Opera, Firefox, and IE and they all open our Viewers help. Page 86 covers Views and the Toolbars.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

okay, i open http://www.samplepdf.com/sample.pdf
i press F1
it opens http://help.opera.com/Windows/11.50/ru/index.html

where should it tell me, how to show panels of the viewer ?

Since you are looking for help on using the plugin, and not finding it on the context menu, focus will then be on the plug-in, and F1 will open the PDF Viewer's help file (in a new instance of PDF-XChange).

The printing problems also arise from using the Print command when focus is not on the plugin. Adobe Reader also suffers from this problem — use the Print command with focus on the browser and all you get is a blank plugin content page.

[Jamie - Tracker Supp]

Thanks Bhikkhu, a very informative post.

[Arioch]

Since you are looking for help on using the plugin, and not finding it on the context menu, focus will then be on the plug-in, and F1 will open the PDF Viewer's help file (in a new instance of PDF-XChange).

Quite reasonable.

Two objections though:

1) if user is mouse-happy, and most newb are, he maybe would not know of F1 and instead would open help menu from GUI - that is Opera's menu in this example.
2) Help is English-only. That is reasonable, GUI translation is easier than Help translation. Still it makes help almost useless for people with poor English (majority of non-English-speaking countries)

[Jamie - Tracker Supp]

We do appreciate the in-depth look at our product and your points are taken. If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.