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Archive for June, 2009

Strange OS X SWT Table bug: scrollbar position wrong compared to content

June 8th, 2009

Today I saw a strange SWT bug which I couldn’t find much on when I searched for it online. In Mac OS X with a Table widget, sometimes pressing the Home or End keys on the keyboard would make the scrollbar move without the content actually moving. So for instance maybe you were scrolled towards the bottom and hit the Home key to get to the top: the bug would make you still see the same table rows even that the blue scrollbar marker would hop to the top. Even weirder, if you scrolled with the mouse wheel after that the scrollbar would snap right back to where you started and scroll like if you had never hit Home to begin with.

The solution was to add an SWT.KeyDown listener on the table and intercept any Home or End keyboard events. Set e.doit = false, then use table.setTopIndex() to change the viewing position in the table by hand. E.g. just reimplement the Home and End keys in your own code.

This worked fine for me.

siker Mac OS X, Programming , , , , ,

Valve Steam Payment Bug: billing address does not match “current country”

June 7th, 2009

Valve’s badly programmed Steam software has problems accepting credit cards in certain situation. The following message may appear when trying to pay:

Your billing address doesn’t look like it matches up with your current country. Please contact support for assistance or use a payment method registered to your current address.

It seems to be caused by more bad programming on Valve’s part:

  1. The software incorrectly believes it can detect what country you are in based on your IP address.
  2. The software incorrectly believes the country you are in affects the validity of your credit card.

Unfortunately there is no easy work around. The first time this happened to me the solution was to change my IP address. I suppose you could also use PayPal instead to pay but PayPal sucks in its own right (their terms of services basically give them carte blanche to rip you off seven ways to Sunday.) A third solution, one which I haven’t tried, could be to sign up for a disposable CC number and set your billing address to something the software approves off. I don’t know if this works.

The second time it happened, some months later, I just put my credit card back in my wallet. I’m not going to fight to spend my money.

I really want an idea like Steam to work but after my experiences so far I think I have to move on. Steam is not a new product – they have had plenty of chances to fix these shortcomings. Maybe Direct 2 Drive is better?

siker Games , , , , ,