Windows Vista Flicker

I recently started working with ALICE as I will be presenting it at a game development expo (tomorrow) and I have become pretty frustrated with it under vista because it flickers constantly. Anything requiring a screen redraw causes the vista sidebar to blink on and off until the redrew request is completed. I tried running it in XP compatibility mode, but there doesn't appear to be any difference. Also, locking the computer crashes the program entirely.

On a related note, the crash recovery screen that allows you to send a report doesn't appear to be working correctly and when you click cancel to get out of it the page it takes you to for support 404 errors.

I've noticed this as well. Alice is "dumb" on Vista standards, as it was made for XP. Most programs do this. I'm afraid i dont have a solution for this

I'm having the same problem on my Vista machine. Can anyone suggest a fix?

[rich0e0rick]

i don't think there is a solution, since Alice has to update the whole sidebar...
Alice isn't a fast enough software to simply skip the loading part i think, but its still a great tool.

As for the crashing when you lock the computer, i have no idea...
probably something to do again with reloading...

rick

I have found that the flicker stops if I maximize/restore my Alice window. However, it is very tedious to click that button every time I need to expand a menu tree or switch tabs...

Yea, does ya'lls work sometimes though? every once in a blue moon ill open alice and it will work flawlessly, other times i get the flicker. if it works good though, it will continue to work good until next time i restart my computer. I wonder if it has something to do with your cache?!?! idk...also, ive seen it mostly do this to Dell users. This true with you?

I do have a Dell, yes. Alice works occasionally, but those times are few and far between.

Originally Posted by Bananaman42

I do have a Dell, yes. Alice works occasionally, but those times are few and far between.

I'm running Alice 2.0 on an HP laptop with Vista Home Premium edition.

I experience lots of display problems of too many types to enumerate here.

Frequently it is necessary for me to minimize and then restore the Alice IDE window to get everything back in synch. My advice is to avoid running Alice on Vista if at all practical. Unfortunately, in the U.S., you have to pay extra to purchase a new computer with WinXP instead of Vista.

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

Originally Posted by DickBaldwin

My advice is to avoid running Alice on Vista if at all practical. Unfortunately, in the U.S., you have to pay extra to purchase a new computer with WinXP instead of Vista.

I happened to read this while I was traveling and only had my Vista laptop with me. While I have an older laptop with XP, I didn't feel like carrying both - and the Vista machine won out because, despite my dislike of change and cranky old man attitude, I have to admit that the latest versions of several programs really do use the advantages of Vista. (If there were more stuff available for the 64-bit version, that would be even nicer.)

Change - like other things - happens. I hope that the Alice team realizes this and will release an Alice 3.0 that does use - not just accomidate - Vista.

(For the record, I'm not a particular fan of Microsoft - but Vista is far ahead of MacOS and Linux in user acceptance - a lost opportunity IMO for Linux.)