Issues with a second monitor

Just in case anyone is interested, I recently encountered a problem using Alice 2.0 with dual monitors.

I attached a second monitor to my laptop running WinXP Pro. Then I selected "Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor."

When I open an Alice user interface and operate it on the primary laptop display, everything works as expected. However, when I drag the user interface onto the second monitor and attempt to create a world by dragging methods into the workspace, many problems occur. Alice 2.0 is the only program that I have identified so far that refuses to cooperate on the second monitor.

Bottom line: I am unable to use the Alice interface to create worlds on the second monitor using Alice 2.0. Hopefully this will be rectified in Alice 3.0.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Interesting experiment. I'm unfamiliar with that kind of setup. Things that
might be interesting to explore, in terms of pinning down areas for bugs:

Does this only fail when Alice is entirely on the second monitor? What if it
spans both monitors? Can you get Alice to start in the second monitor so
you don't have to move it, and does that (not having to cross the boundary) help?

Do you have any other Java applications to test in this kind of setup? Can
you get them to use the same java release [JRE?] as Alice is using? [I'm not fluent enough in Java to advise on how that might be done.]

Do the failures that occur have any common characteristics? Do you get any kind of diagnostic output for operations that would have worked on the first monitor?

Bizarre but worth a shot: does it make any difference where your second
display appears to be in relation the the laptop display? I've seen pictures
of people using 3 monitors, not with Alice, so {left, right} tests should be possible.

Does the second monitor have the same resolution and depth as the first?
Have you tried changing the settings for it at all? Can you get similar failures by changing settings on the first monitor (laptop display), when Alice runs on that? Can you get failures with other monitors? Maybe projectors?

Are there drivers for monitors that you can update? Does it help if you do?

I don't know when 2.2 is coming out, and most of the above is guesswork about what could go wrong, as far as I can imagine, but I think the more data you can provide about this failure the more likely it is to be fixable in subsequent releases (2.2, 3.x).

Originally Posted by hgs

Interesting experiment. I'm unfamiliar with that kind of setup. Things that
might be interesting to explore, in terms of pinning down areas for bugs:

Does this only fail when Alice is entirely on the second monitor? What if it
spans both monitors? Can you get Alice to start in the second monitor so
you don't have to move it, and does that (not having to cross the boundary) help?

Do you have any other Java applications to test in this kind of setup? Can
you get them to use the same java release [JRE?] as Alice is using? [I'm not fluent enough in Java to advise on how that might be done.]

Do the failures that occur have any common characteristics? Do you get any kind of diagnostic output for operations that would have worked on the first monitor?

Bizarre but worth a shot: does it make any difference where your second
display appears to be in relation the the laptop display? I've seen pictures
of people using 3 monitors, not with Alice, so {left, right} tests should be possible.

Does the second monitor have the same resolution and depth as the first?
Have you tried changing the settings for it at all? Can you get similar failures by changing settings on the first monitor (laptop display), when Alice runs on that? Can you get failures with other monitors? Maybe projectors?

Are there drivers for monitors that you can update? Does it help if you do?

I don't know when 2.2 is coming out, and most of the above is guesswork about what could go wrong, as far as I can imagine, but I think the more data you can provide about this failure the more likely it is to be fixable in subsequent releases (2.2, 3.x).

I am optimistically expecting (hoping) that 2.2 will be available before the beginning of the fall semester and I expect that it will be based on a much newer version of Java so I am going to wait until it is released to do any serious troubleshooting.

Although I haven't done extensive testing, I haven't found any problems running Java v1.6 on the external monitor. As I recall, Alice 2.0 is still running Java 1.3 or maybe 1.4 so, as I mentioned above, I am going to wait until 2.2 is released before doing any serious troubleshooting.

Even if v2.2 has the same problems, I will still be optimistic that Alice v3.0 won't experience the problems. As I understand it, 3.0 is built on top of Eclipse instead of a proprietary user interface. Eclipse is a tried and proven product in the Java world.

Thanks for the input. You provided an interesting series of questions and I will certainly review them when I do begin troubleshooting.

By the way, I find this monitor arrangement to be very convenient. I have the primary desktop on the laptop positioned to the left of the external desktop monitor with the mouse to the right of the desktop monitor. I usually keep an email browser window, several toolbars, and lots of folders open on the left display and do most of my actual work on the right display using a full external keyboard in lieu of the laptop keyboard. But I can still pack my laptop up and take it onsite to a customer facility when needed.

I experienced quite a bit of difficulty getting it set up the way I wanted it in the first place. The system seemed to have a mind of its own and kept wanting to place the primary desktop on the external monitor whenever it was plugged in. I tried lots of different things to force the primary desktop to stay on the laptop and I don't remember which of those things finally succeeded in making it stay there.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Well, in the hope that it gets seen, I'll re-express my opinion that having several pre-releases of 2.2 (2.1.x for various values of x) would really help in getting the community to help with bug reports and problem replication.

I experienced the same exact situation described by thread starter with a second monitor connected to my laptop. Alice just refuses to work properly on the second monitor. I have tested Alice 2.2 and unfortunately, same issues persist. Very frustrating as I have a laptop with a small screen.

I have the exact same setup (laptop as primary and monitor as secondary) and whenever I drop an event into the editor section, it doesn't bring up the popup options and the event is never successfully placed there.

Wondering if anyone else experienced this outcome:
1. Alice program COMPLETELY on second monitor.
2. Attempt to place events into the editor multiple times.
3. Randomly the popup for an event (after many failed attempts) appears at the far right edge of my laptop screen (even though the edge of the Alice program is a couple inches from the left edge of the secondary monitor).

Tim S.

I observed the same effect: if the Storytelling Alice window is open in the second monitor then the popups for the method parameters does nevertheless always appear at the edge of the primary monitor.

For me that is not a bit problem, but it did confuse me initially because I didn't notice the popup at all and therefore dropping methods into the editor window did not work. This I believe is the same problem others have reported here, so it is probably the same for all versions of Alice.

[clmiller24]

I know I am behind the times, my school still has me on Windows XP. I have dual monitors set up (not cloning). The second monitor is a projector in my classroom with an interactive board, first monitor is my primary on my desk (used for power points and presenter view).

The primary monitor works fine, I can interact fully with Alice. I drag the entire program over to the projector, I can run the world, but I cannot click and drag items, or even select drop down menus or create new methods/events. Doesn't matter is USB mouse, Bluetooth mouse or interactive touch board. Nothing works.

I do not want to go back to cloning monitors because I use PowerPoint in the same period, and want presenter view. Also allows email and other programs up on primary monitor.

HELP!

[x2495iiii]

From what I've heard, dual monitors should work fine with Alice, but smartboards sometimes do not.

See if there are some rendering or graphics settings you can change or disable for the smartboard, and if not, disable the interactivity entirely and use projection only, as that shouldn't have any issues.