Fences annoyances & bugs

from Stardock Forums

Annoyances:

1) No changelog for fences. There's no way to see what's been (supposedly) fixed or what features were added, or when anything happened.

2) No seperate forum for fences.Because of this, there's no official wishlist, no way to tell what the devs are working on, no way to give legitimate feedback or suggestions in a way that is publicly accessible. I really really hate "closed door" development. It's a method Blizzard used to employ at the beginning of World of Warcraft and have since realized is infuriating to the interested users and fixed.

3) Can't uninstall without Impulse. This is probably a limitation of the way they do DRM, but it's still annoying. There was no warning when I uninstalled impulse that I wouldn't be able to uninstall x, x or x without it.

4) The configuration screen is mostly crap (minor annoyance). Looks like a graphic designer with no UI design experience or inclinations made it.

 

Annoyances and/or bugs:

1) Wobbling / moving / shaking icons. I haven't seen this posted by anyone else so I'll assume it's a fairly rare situation or unique to my setup. Fences does don't seem to get along with the "Align icons to grid" option very well. Some icons outside of fences will move a short distance to the left or right when the mouse button is held down (i.e. when clicking on an icon or moving something). It starts to become really annoying. Here's some details of my setup though, which may be uncommon: Windows 7, 2 monitors that are different sizes, a small on the left, large on the right with the right display set as primary. It's not all icons that do it, but some will seem to not quite get placed on the grid correctly, and they won't like it.

2) Stuck icons. This has only happened with two icons which were large pictures dragged out of firefox onto the desktop (outside of a fence). They became immovable. Turning off "Align to grid" seems to have fixed it (tried it on a whim), turning it back on they were still fixed.

 

Mostly I'm bitching about these problems because I really, really like fences. It's a very unique and well implemented little program, and I'd love to see it perfected. But there is absolutely no way I'm springing for the pro version unless some of these are addressed, and right now I can't tell if anything is being addressed at all. I just upgraded to v1.00.4620 and I know fuck all what it did besides add the one shot "upgrade to pro" dialog on restart.

5,516 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I also like Fences but it also has problems for me.  Looks like nobody else is reporting this one:

Fences frequently opens/starts the wrong application.  

Shortcuts in a fence to VB scripts that run things may start MS Explorer.   Firefox being started instead of Thunderbird.  MS Explorer started instead of Thunderbird.   

OS Vista Business x86

Fences V1.00.2787 RC

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

1) Wobbling / moving / shaking icons. I haven't seen this posted by anyone else so I'll assume it's a fairly rare situation or unique to my setup. Fences does don't seem to get along with the "Align icons to grid" option very well. Some icons outside of fences will move a short distance to the left or right when the mouse button is held down (i.e. when clicking on an icon or moving something). It starts to become really annoying. Here's some details of my setup though, which may be uncommon: Windows 7, 2 monitors that are different sizes, a small on the left, large on the right with the right display set as primary. It's not all icons that do it, but some will seem to not quite get placed on the grid correctly, and they won't like it.
End of quote

Still happens with latest version, 100% repro rate. Fences hates the "Align icons to grid" setting. Wiggling icons are annoying.

 

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Joshua,

Hi.  We do have a forum for Fences.  It is here, I will see about having it linked better from the root Forums.

https://forums.stardock.com/forum/501

Thank you for your align to grid feedback.  We will try to reproduce your issues in testing and get back with you on this thread.

Please understand that Fences Free does not see frequent updates.  Only the Pro version has updates to features.  We do fix bugs in the free version, so if we find the align to grid issue I will let you know.

Zargon

 

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks for looking in to it, if there's any other information or particulars you need let me know. It's still 100% repro rate for me.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Can you please give me the steps to reproduce on a fresh machine?  Do any of your friends machines have this issue?  If possible could you use Jing to record the icon moving issue?

Thanks!

Zargon