Auto Chart Scroll Stops Ocassionally

[Alfred]

Have noticed the auto chart scrolling will stop ocassionally....perhaps once or twice a day or so. It seems to be associated with placing graphics on a chart...but cannot put my finger on the exact cause.

The little scroll box in the scroll bar will start moving to the left and the price will become grayed out. Then when you grab the scroll box and move to the right everything will be OK again.

Thanks....

[NinjaTrader_Dierk]

Thanks for pointing this out. Please let us know as you have a reproducible scenario.

[Alfred]

Dierk...

Here is an example that just popped up...this is a 6 second chart on the ER2...it was working OK (I had just removed all previous garphics)...then I added a line and rectangle to the chart and the auto scroll stopped ....(was on the phone and did not witness the actual stop)....then scrolling to the right with the scroll bar everything worked OK....the stoppage does not always happen when placing graphics...only occasionally.

I played with expanding and contracting...that does not seem to trigger scroll hang-ups...

I have noticed this behavior for some time now....but never bothered to post on this till now...

Thanks !...

[NinjaTrader_Dierk]

Thanks for reporting. We'll look into.

[NinjaTrader_Christian]

Hi Alfred !

I tried quite a time to reproduce this, without success.

a few questions:
- can you somehow create a reproducable scenario ?
- does this happen 'often' ?
- did this ever happen without user action (e.g. drawing) ?
- does pressing the 'end'-button on the keyboard always bring the black label again and then it works ok ?

only thing i can imagine right now is a hardware defect of your left mouse button. that would mean that you can see a litte hand icon for a short time (the chart canvas drag & drag cursor). can you exclude this possibility ?

[Alfred]

Hi Christian...

I so far cannot come up with something that will always reproduce the auto scroll hangup.

It does not happen often...perhaps once or maybe twice a day or so....

It does not seem to happen without user action and since most of my actions are placing draw tools on a chart I thought it might be related to that. It does not seem to happen as soon as objects are placed, but maybe a few minutes or so after placement.

I have not tried the "end" button on the keyboard...I usually grab the box slider on the scroll bar and move to the right when I notice the price grayed out....that will fix it for me when it does hang.

I will keep playing around with this & see if I can come up with something more concrete....

Thanks ! ....

[Alfred]

Christian...

When I left click on the mouse when the pointer is showing, a little hand will sometimes flash up that enables scrolling the chart (depending on where one clicks on the chart...and if I hold down on the left mouse button the hand will then show continually).....moving the cursor around on the chart and left clicking (without holding down) ...the little hand will not always flash on...it depends on where the cursor is placed on the chart. Once the little hand appears I can see how it would be very easy to accidentally move the chart to the right 1 or 2 bars and gray out the price....this may be the root of the problem for me.
I am often left clicking on a graphic item on the chart to highlight it and then move it.

I checked with another identical mouse on Ninja on another computer and it behaves this way also...

Is that little hand supposed to appear and behave like the above upon left click ?

Thanks....

[NinjaTrader_Christian]

Hi Alfred !

This is how it's supposed to be. When you click with the mouse into the chart canvas, a little hand is shown and you can move pan the chart to left or to right. So, when you accidently move the chart away from the last bar, just press the button down again, and move the mouse to the left, to see the last bar. Or just press the 'end' button on the keyboard, which does the same.

Kind regards,
Christian

[Alfred]

Hi Christian....

Thanks for the info....

Here is a suggestion though....Would it be possible to activate the chart pan / scroll feature only after one holds down the left click for a second or two ?....perhaps something like that ?.... As it is now, when you are quickly left clicking to highlight and move a graphic object or to make a chart window the active chart or perhaps clicking to eliminate the highlight indications on an existing graphic object, it is very easy to accidentally scroll the chart one or two bars and deactivate auto scroll with that quick left click....so as it is now you have to keep checking on the current price box after every quick left click to make sure you have not deactivated auto scroll....and then correcting it if you have deactivated. Often I will accidentally deactivate auto scroll upon quick left click and not notice it until minutes later.

Another thing to consider in this area....In another charting program one must hold down left click someplace on the price bars themselves in a chart to scroll / pan the chart....left clicking anyplace else on the chart window will not activate scroll / pan. Doing it this way would also eliminate many instances of deactivating auto scroll when quickly left clicking someplace else on a chart window.

Thanks....

[NinjaTrader_Dierk]

Thanks for your suggestions. We'll add them to the list.

[Alfred]

Here are some further thoughts on the auto scoll feature I put together in a video...

Here is a link to play it...hope it works...this is the first time I have tried this...

http://www.screencast.com/t/H0VHprz69

Thanks

I checked the link after posting the above and it worked OK.

The program I used for this video is called Jing...it is in beta now and is free for the time being and it is also very easy to use. It's put out by the Snagit people, and they do first class work. I think this is a great way to communicate ideas back and forth....

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thanks for the comprehensive video, its highly appreciated and will be taken into consideration.

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Hi Alfred,

We played around with a delay and I feel it not usable. The longer the delay, the less user friendly it is, the shorter the delay, we are just back at the same point we are at now. We have not had any other users suggest changes in this area so I am hesitant on adding a delay.

What we are going to do is add a thick solid arrow in the upper corner of the chart that is displayed when the current bar is off the screen. A user can then click on this which will reset the chart so the current bar is the last visible bar.

[Alfred]

Hi Ray...

You may not be getting other users too concerned about this until the graphic tools in Ninja are revised so they become really usable tools that can extend above, below and to the right of the chart...perhaps users are just not clicking around that much on charts revising tools etc. as yet ??

My feeling is that it is so easy currently to disable auto scroll a number of ways (as shown in the video) that one may be often clicking on the large arrow you suggest (though that could be helpful) to correct a scroll hang. I think a separate Icon to enable scrolling would perhaps be best, and as a second (perhaps) less desirable solution would be to enable auto scroll upon left click held down on the chart bars only, as the demo showed in the other program in the video....this would cut out probably 90% of auto scroll hangs caused by left clicking.

My idea on the delay was to have no delay on a quick left click itself for say left clicking to highlight graphic objects etc , but to have a delay of a second or two when the left click is held down constantly before scrowling /panning was enabled. That way auto scroll would not be enabled with the immediate quick left click....I'm not sure how difficult this would be to do though.....or ...fishing around for other ideas...what about a single left click for highlighting graphic tools to move delete etc but a double left click, holding down the second click, to enable auto scroll ??

This is not a super urgent problem for me...but I can see how it would become more so as graphic tools become more usable and one would be clicking around a lot more.
As it is now I will just occasionally place graphic tools after the fact to see how a technique would have behaved had they been able to extend....and I'm still in Sim mode too (!!)...

Thanks for all your time on this....

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

The delay we experimented with was exactly as you described. Since NT 6.5 has many enhancements around drawing objects I would rather wait and see what the feedback is on the issues you have raised and revisit it then.