Inverted scrolling not working for M$ applications when in focus

[judicious]

Hello,

love the app. Truly life is good using XMBC.

I have noticed this issue for a while and been patiently waiting for it to come up on the forum, but alas it has not. I use this app mainly for the inverted mouse scrolling feature.

My settings in XMBC (v2.7 portable) are default except for
* "Invert mouse scroll wheel scrolling" ticked
* "Force scroll pages/lines" ticked
* "Make scroll wheel scroll window under cursor" ticked

It works a treat except in Microsoft applications. If they are in focus then the mouse scroll inversion does not invert. For instance, I have Excel open and am scrolling and no inversion of scrolling. However, if I then click the task bar and hover the mouse over Excel and then scroll then bingo the inversion is inverted. Weird huh!

This is the same for
Word, Outlook, IE, Excel, Project, Windows Explorer.

As I said other apps work just fine. I am surprised that this has not come up, but I guess someone has to be first. For the record I have noticed it on Windows 7 and 10 and both Office 2010 and 2016.

One last note on this is that the "out of focus" scrolling I mentioned above is not 100% consistent. Sometimes even when out of focus the M$ apps still do not invert their scrolling.

Any resolution to this would be greatly appreciated.

[phil]

Are you really using 2.7 portable or did you mean 2.17?
Its working perfectly here (2.18 beta 3 & 4) in explorer and word (2016), focused (active) or not.

I wonder if the portable version isn't playing ball (that might explain why it hasn't come up!)... I'll have to check that but not tonight.

Thanks,
Phil

[judicious]

Hi Phil,

yep, 2.17 is what I meant.

I have to used the portable version because my work laptop is locked down.


Thanks for checking it out.

[phil]

I'll try and have a proper look at the portable version to see if I can re-create this one when I get some time (prob not before the weekend). Please feel free to remind me if I haven't got back to you by this time next week!

[judicious]

Hi Phil.

I confirm that the installable version I have at home works just fine (no weird scrolling issues). If you get a chance to check this out, that would be great.

[phil]

OK thanks for that info.

[phil]

OK I think I know what is going on.... XMBC Portable runs in user integrity mode - and is unable to send messages to elevated windows or windows running at a higher integrity level (unless you run as administrator). Thats OK/Acceptable (well I cant do anything about that at least) but there is a bug, causing the integrity level check to fail and say it cant send messages to processes with the same integrity (non-elevated) processes.

This is why it seems somewhat random...
I think I have fixed it (as best I can) - I will PM you a copy of 2.18 Beta 8 (as portable) so you can check it for me. The worst that could happen is that the scroll messages will get ignored completely, but I'm not seeing that happen here.

NOTE: The Only way for XMBC to be able to interact with/send messages to higher integrity level processes is for it to run as a UI Accessibility tool which requires it be located under/in the "Program Files" folder - aka installed. The only other way would be to run XMBC as administrator.

EDIT: More to the point, if an elevated window has input focus, XMBC cant switch focus to another app (ie. the option "Activate window when scrolling" will not work if the current application has a higher integrity level than XMBC. Again, I can't do anything about that, as XMBC simply does not see the messages coming in if they are destined for a higher integrity level window.

This may leave the possibility of invert scroll not working when switching between windows of higher integrity levels in the portable version.

Thanks,
Phil

[judicious]

Phil,

again thanks for your efforts. You updated worked beautifully and inverted scrolling is back in action even for the misbehaving applications.

I'm not one for emoticons, but

[phil]

Brilliant thanks for letting me know!