Un-docked widgets non-intuitive to re-dock on macOS

• Dec 22, 2018 - 10:33
Reported version
3.0
Type
Ergonomical (UX)
Frequency
Many
Severity
S4 - Minor
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

A docked widget can be undocked by
Dragging the window out of its docked position
Double-clicking the dock title bar
Click the undock icon on the right of the title bar just to the left of the window close [x]

Of the 3, only (c) is visually intuitive and gives an indication of a button (albeit small and no tooltip).

To (re-)dock the window
Dragging the window out of its docked position (this seems hit and mis for some windows)
Double-clicking the dock title bar
(c) is not available. This has come up multiple times on the forum (a sample)

https://musescore.org/en/node/26236
https://musescore.org/en/node/31596
https://musescore.org/en/node/18484

May be related to Issue #279219: Inspector no longer docked at start

I recommend
add a button (could even be the same button, unless the Qt palette has a button/widget for (re-)dock)
Add a tooltip, “Undock/Dock” (optional “window” e.g. “Undock/Dock window”
(I was hoping to suggest “Undock/Redock” but redock does not seem to be a much used term)


Comments

You can't even re-dock at all on Mac. It's literally just impossible to re-dock the Palette. No amount of double-clicking or praying can fix it. Please. Add a button.

I've used Musescore on mac for two years, and just updated to v3. Looking at it now, I think I undocked the inspector the first time I used Musescore and couldn't put it back, so I gave up and hid the panel. Then for all this time I just forgot that any of that functionality existed in Musescore. Now I've undocked it again in v3, so I guess I'll factory reset the application because it seems that's the only way to fix this.

A 'dock/undock' toggle inside the panel would seem like the most intuitive solution.

It would also be really nice to be able to dock other windows, like the mixer. Clicking and dragging to juggle five windows is a pain (I do some transcribing so I usually have a second application onscreen that I'm transcribing from).

Status active needs info

Are you saying the standard method of simply dragging to the docking icon doesn't work on your particular systems? Works fine for me. Can someone give a precise series of steps to reproduce a problem with using this standard method?

Adding double-click as an additional method would be fine too, of course.

All of these problems seem to be with Mac. On windows I can double click a window's title bar to dock it, as long as it's dockable.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc: I'm using Musescore 3.0.5.21343 on OSX 10.14.3, on a 2013 macbook. I click and drag the Inspector panel by its header bar, and try dropping it in various places with no result: on the right edge of the main window, inside the right area of the main window, or onto the right end of the toolbars. On most applications I can think of (eg Adobe products), there would also be a visual cue while dragging, to show when I've dragged the window to the right 're-docking location'. Something like a snap effect. I don't know if Musescore has that, but I don't see it.

I can also do what you describe on my windows system. It seems to be a Mac only problem. Don't any of the Mac developers have this problem?

Workaround Yes No

Yeah, I just unfortunately undocked the Inspector. Then when I docked it by double clicking on the title bar, it docked. However now it is completely black and blank. Nothing in the inspector. Using the latest 3.2.3.22971 on macOS Mojave latest 10.14.6. Completely fresh new install of Mojave too. I undocked it, and it remained black and blank.

Attachment Size
Screen Shot 2019-07-28 at 8.03.45 PM.png 44.55 KB

Yes. Once redocked by double clicking the title bar, it becomes black and blank. Undocking, redocking from that point on has no effect. It stays black and black, like in the screen-shot. Reset to Factory does bring everything back.

Dear Macintosh friends! Fear not for I have solved our troubles!

If you (like me) find your self accidentally undocking the Inspector (or something else), there is a wonderful, easy solution to your problem that involves no resets of any kind. But it is a bit sneaky!

All you have to do is press View in the top settings, select some other tool (I suggest Play Panel), and then drag your Inspector on top of it. Once the Play Panel gets highlighted in blue, just release your Inspector window and it should snap back into its original position!

Screenshot 2019-10-31 at 1.45.18 PM.png
Screenshot 2019-10-31 at 1.45.46 PM.png

It works for me every time, unless my MuseScore window is very small (in which case I just resize it to take up most of the screen, and the fix works immediately).

Usually after this I end up with two "tabs" on the bottom — one for Inspector and one for Play Panel. In that case I usually just close the Play Panel and get everything back to normal.

Hopefully this solution can help you! :)

(Sorry for the necropost!)

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Does not mean there is not a common cause. In this case, it looks like the re-docking mechanism is using a Window's specific mechanism. No need to have a specific bug for every platform, but I can open a separate one. I was hoping a fix for one would be a fix for all.

Maybe, maybe not. So far this issue is about macOS and macOS only, Windoes apparently doesn't have that issue, so it is not platform independant