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Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

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Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#191

Post by chadcmulligan »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

Further, when installing, it would hang at some point without any sign of a prompt but would instantly continue if the mouse were moved. You could easily test this - turn your mouse upside-down during install and wait (to avoid any incidental mouse motion due to desk vibration etc). Told my IT friend who was loading my machine and he said "you're confused; I've installed hundreds of times and never seen that". So I t…

I recall quite a few times having to send a message to the message queue in code I'd written for this reason. I forget why though - someone can probably remind me, if I didn't send a message it would just stop.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#192

Post by wruza »

Try opening a large file with Notepad on a contemporary machine. The window must not be full screen. When loaded, mark all text using the mouse (the keyboard works as well, it just needs more manual skill). While still holding the button down (and marking) move the mouse down, so the text gets marked and scrolled. Now compare the scroll speed while holding the mouse still versus wiggling it. Depending on your machine the speed up can be several times faster.

I always thought that this scroll behavior is known and special in that it helps precise scrolling. I know winapi and why this happens, but never viewed it as a wild bug. Can’t recall now, but I think Mac and Linux behave the same way. Can someone confirm that?

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#194

Post by izacus »

mehrdadn wrote: post #136
ben_w wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A previous employer of mine explicitly requested this behaviour in their app. The app showed a map, and could align map north with compass north; to save battery, it would drop to an incredibly low frame rate (1fps?) about one second after your finger left the screen. It achieves the power goal, and has a high rating in the App Store, so I learned something about user requirements and being humble from this experienc…

Question (I don't know how Android works) -- how is there even a "frame rate" for a map that isn't moving? Shouldn't it not be doing anything at all when nobody is touching anything?

Most maps these days are rendered via OpenGL (or Metal) and in those cases you still manually flip buffers and order GPU to render a frame. It's possible to control this process to avoid exessive power usage.

Of course, for most developers that might mean to not update/invalidate() a map view constantly :)

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#195

Post by corrigible »

mr_toad wrote: post #165
samstave wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off my lawn! But what newbies will bever know the heck of: dip switch settings for IRQ for modems. Thats what literally got me into computers... In order to dial up BBSs and play tthe Pit and dl warez. —- Ive told this story before, but in about 1992? Or so - i got grounded for a month because i had been calling in long distance to a bbs in san jose to play the pit - and racked up a long distance bill of $926 - m…

> But what newbies will bever know the heck of: dip switch settings for IRQ for modems. And dip switches to set hard drives to primary/secondary. Get that wrong and your machine didn’t boot.

And making sure ATM0(?) was sent so that the modem was quiet...

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#198

Post by mkd1964 »

delinka wrote: post #129
wongarsu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I implement progress bars I most often implement "pessimistic progress", so "considering all timeouts, worst case we are 46.5% (of the time) to some result", with an update every few hundreed milliseconds. As possible mix in data from completed subtasks. Nobody ever complains if the process suddenly speeds up because progress was made before the timeout, as long as your initial estimate wasn't absurd (looks at W…

Absurd initial estimate? All of the estimates tend to be absurd. Done in 30s ... I mean 15min ... ah, 10s ... 1hr 7min ... Oh, come _on_ ...

We used to call these "Microsoft Minutes"...

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#199

Post by trungvmn »

Each generation of parents is responsible for raising their children to mature, to be good people of the family and useful for society. Ancestors taught grandparents and grandparents to teach their parents, and parents to teach us. So in general, good ancestors, good grandparents, good grandparents, good parents, and then good children. However, good parents whose children become corrupt, destroy society, even kill their own parents, who does this responsibility belong to? People will contemplate or listen to ideas, judgments, or conclusions from experts on education, humanity and society, up to law, ethics, and of course not forgetting to refer to monks of religions, to judge about spoiled children. https://privatecartransferhoian.com/tour/private-car-transfe...

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#200

Post by dbtx »

dbtx wrote: post #181
dbtx wrote: post #145

I have a terrifically annoying bug that shows up somewhere between X and GTK and all Gecko-based browsers. While I'm scrolling down in a web page with the mouse wheel, within a few seconds the page will stop moving. The mouse will still move around, but it will stop changing its cursor based on hovered elements, and further mouse actions will do nothing. It will unjam itself something like 30 seconds later if I wait,…

> ${somehow}, ${something} Sorry, something resurfaced-- I think I remember now that I switched on seconds for the sake of finding out more precisely how long a jam would last. Immediately it became obvious that they didn't last long anymore, and that the reason it used to be "30-ish seconds" was whenever the minutes finally changed, it broke loose just the same way.

Hmm, it goes away if I use Fluxbox instead of XFCE. Neat.
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