The MetaModal NonDialog

I suspect this was an example of the new hide-a-system-modal-dialog that I've been fortunate enough to encounter in Windows on several occasions. That's when something posts a system modal dialog that locks everything on the screen, of course, but the system modal dialog is behind one of the other windows so you can't get to it.

Those are the worst.

But there's also the hide-a-window-modal dialog, which I suppose this could have been, where it's just a window-modal dialog but it's buried somewhere under all the other windows.

To me, but it's just me, I think any modal dialog should always be in front. But obviously some psychotic sociopath at Microsoft doesn't agree.

Tsaukpaetra

@CoyneTheDup said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

To me, but it's just me, I think any modal dialog should always be in front. But obviously some psychotic sociopath at Microsoft doesn't agree.

All model dialog boxes are on top, but some non -modal Windows are on top of them!

Tsaukpaetra

@PJH said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

One of these things is not like the other

Two of them apparently

And you're missing a few.

Meh, it was a quick scan on mobile. Actually, curious if the mentions work... @PJH_Gąska @pjh_a are you 🔵?

Edit: bug detected!

PJH

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@PJH said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

And you're missing a few.

Meh, it was a quick scan on mobile.

You got all the ones, and only the ones, containing PJH that belong to me.

It's the ones that don't that you missed.

@shadowmod is probably the most recognisable.

Tsaukpaetra

@PJH said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

It's the ones that don't that you missed.

Unfortunately the relation database for account ownership for this site is currently corrupted, and unfortunately I still don't have a reliable repair tool to go out and fix all the missing references.

It's all right though, @all_users has (probably) reliable data still!

CoyneTheDup

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@CoyneTheDup said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

To me, but it's just me, I think any modal dialog should always be in front. But obviously some psychotic sociopath at Microsoft doesn't agree.

All model dialog boxes are on top, but some non -modal Windows are on top of them!

No, not always. In one application, such as Outlook, the modal dialog should be in front of any application windows.

But Outlook can have multiple main and message windows open. Call each of those a "presentation". A modal dialog popped by one presentation can lock all the presentations. Say the modal is on presentation #1: as far as I know, the modal is always in front of presentation #1. But presentation #2 can be in front of #1, with the modal nicely hidden by the locked #2 window.

Fortunately, you can usually sort that out with alt-tab--or by clicking windows in the explorer bar--but you're left to hunt through presentations to figure out which one is locking all the others.

I've had the hid-a-system-modal 3 times I think (two times I'm left to guess). The third time I was able to see about a 1 mm square corner of the dialog window behind two other offset, locked, windows. So by luck I was able to click on it and bring it to the front, after I finally noticed the corner peeking out. (The other two times I think it was the same thing, but I wound up doing a reboot to get out of it.)

The hide-a-system-modal may be some kind of in-house thing; I'm not sure if our software management software is all MS or part home-grown. The time I was able to recover, it was a dialog for the management software.

Tsaukpaetra

@CoyneTheDup said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

No, not always.

Come on, it couldn't be any more obvious if I used the actual line!

Maciejasjmj

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@CoyneTheDup said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

To me, but it's just me, I think any modal dialog should always be in front. But obviously some psychotic sociopath at Microsoft doesn't agree.

All model dialog boxes are on top, but some non -modal Windows are on top of them!

mysql_real_always_on_top

groo

@blakeyrat I'm getting really curious about mac classic, can it be emulated in virtualbox or something?

Tsaukpaetra

@groo said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@blakeyrat I'm getting really curious about mac classic, can it be emulated in virtualbox or something?

James Friend | PCE.js - Classic Mac OS in the Browser

fbmac

This post is deleted!

ben_lubar

:@PJH_Gąska:

OH! @PJH_Gąska doesn't have an avatar.

Tsaukpaetra

@ben_lubar said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

:@PJH_Gąska:

OH! @PJH_Gąska doesn't have an avatar.

Was wondering when you'd notice the problem. :P

ben_lubar

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@ben_lubar said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

:@PJH_Gąska:

OH! @PJH_Gąska doesn't have an avatar.

Was wondering when you'd notice the problem. :P

NOT_A_BUG BY_DESIGN

Tsaukpaetra

@ben_lubar said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@Tsaukpaetra said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

@ben_lubar said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

:@PJH_Gąska:

OH! @PJH_Gąska doesn't have an avatar.

Was wondering when you'd notice the problem. :P

NOT_A_BUG BY_DESIGN

You mean, since un-customized profile pictures are actually served by CDN, cross-domain is blocked by the plugin and can't be rendered so it fails?

dkf

@CoyneTheDup said in The MetaModal NonDialog:

hide-a-system-modal

System-wide modals are almost always wrong, and definitely shouldn't ever be done more than one at a time. (The exceptions where they aren't wrong are for things like UAC elevation dialogs.) Applications shouldn't be using them. Hiding them is doubling down on the