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Alt + Scroll activates menu in CS5? (Windows)

Community Beginner ,
Jun 30, 2010 Jun 30, 2010

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Noticed a strange behavior in CS5, namely, that when I use Alt+MouseWheel to zoom, the image zooms as expected, however the File menu is activated.  I have to release and then quickly press Alt again AFTER zooming in order to return the focus to my image.

I fired up CS4 to check (as I did not remember this issue previously), and confirmed that CS4 does NOT activate the File menu when scrolling using the Alt+MouseWheel method.  This is a rather annoying trait, and has in fact driven me to use CS4 except when I need to use some CS5-specific feature.

Is this a glitch/bug?  Or by design?  If it is the former, a fix would be greatly appreciated, in the meantime I will continue to rely on CS4 when dealing with projects involving heavy zooming.

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Adobe
Community Beginner ,
Sep 04, 2010 Sep 04, 2010

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Score.  Okay it actually appears to be related to a difference in the GUI handler in 64-bit editions of Windows.  I ran it on Windows XP 64-bit and found it to fail there as well.   I have come up with a solution for this however, and am currently doing testing on it before I release anything.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 04, 2010 Sep 04, 2010

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Alright, I have updated the download with the new fix:

[note by Moderator: use this link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cs5altfix/ as the others have expired]

no_photoshop_alt_menubar.zip (expired)

This is very, very much more 'involved' than before.  The full source is included, as usual, but here is the general rundown (also found just about verbatim in the source comments).

In order to suppress the Alt activation, we send an Esc signal after every single (by-itself, i.e., with no combo keys) AltUp signal.

There are two initial problems with this:

  1) an Esc will cancel any drag or selection operation in progress

  2) an Esc will cause the fullscreen mode (without menubars) to revert to normal screen mode

To account for these limitations, we only send the Esc signal if the following are true:

  1) the primary mouse button is not down

  2) we are not in the second fullscreen mode

  3) no other keyboard button was pressed simultaneously

The hardest part was figuring out how to programmatically determine the Photoshop window mode (normal, first and second fullscreen modes).  I have done this via a combination of a GUI control position and a single pixel check (as a last resort to differentiate between the two 'fullscreen' modes).

I have tested it on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, in the x32 and x64 versions of Photoshop, and it appears to work consistently.  Let me know how your results go.

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Contributor ,
Sep 07, 2010 Sep 07, 2010

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Thanks for all the work you doing to alleviate this annoyance. Your current script is working perfect in the 32 bit version of PS CS5 on my Win 7 64 bit machine. However when I try it in the 64 bit version of PS CS5 I get the following results.

I run the no_photoshop_alt_menubar.exe, open PS CS5 64 bit, and then open a image file. The script works, no menubar. Then I close the open image and open a different image and the alt menu is reactivated. The  no_photoshop_alt_menubar.exe has to be rerun for every new image opened in PS CS5 64 bit.

32 bit PS works fine. 64 bit PS almost works.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 09, 2010 Sep 09, 2010

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Glad to hear 32-bit is working, but I'm having some trouble duplicating your issue with the 64-bit.  If possible, I'd like to get a little more information about what you are doing so as to better discover the source of the problem.

How are you opening the first file?  Double-clicking the file?  Pressing Ctrl+O?  Using the File->Open menu?

How are you closing it?  Ctrl+W?  File->Close?

Are you using Photoshop in fullscreen mode?  If so, which one (menubars or no)?  If not, did you maximize it or not?

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Contributor ,
Sep 09, 2010 Sep 09, 2010

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I can not get it to duplicate what was happening in my previous post. Right now everything seems random. I have a file open and go thorough different screen modes, maximize, minimize and some time it works and other times it does not. This is all done without having to restart the script. Does not matter if I open it with control O, double click, or open from the file menu. I can not seem to figure out a pattern anymore. This is all with the 64 version of PS.

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 15, 2010 Sep 15, 2010

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I have been unable to duplicate your problem in XP x64, and unfortunately I do not have any Win7 x64 system available.  Is it possible you have any other keyhook/macro programs running?  Without a pattern to work with, I am somewhat at a loss.

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Contributor ,
Sep 15, 2010 Sep 15, 2010

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I do not think I have anything else running since I have never messed with these types of programs before now.  It might be possible that my company has key loggers running. If they are they are not in the process viewer. Because if they were visible I would kill the process.

Thanks for all of you help another developer sent me an application that is working for me at the moment.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/710952?tstart=0

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 20, 2010 Sep 20, 2010

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Great!  Glad you found a solution.

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New Here ,
Oct 08, 2010 Oct 08, 2010

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Again I really want to thank you for working on this and sharing your work. The fix was working great for me, but my old computer was not too happy with the CS5 programs ( running really slow ), so I decided to go back to CS3. I will definetily use the fix once I get a better computer and can run CS5 again.

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Participant ,
Feb 08, 2012 Feb 08, 2012

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Thanks for the script, but I find that it provides a "one-shot deal". E.g. I press Alt+Scroll, then I stop, and if I try to scroll again, I have to re-press ALT. On large projects it takes a second for zooming to happen (in InDesign), and I don't know in advance how much to scroll 😕

Has anyone found a solution for that?

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New Here ,
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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I couldn't find the fix anywhere and previous AutoHotkey fixes never fixed everything, so I tried creating my own, for those who still have this problem, this fix seems to work in Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator:

Add this to a new AutoHotkey script and then run it:

Alt::

KeyWait, Alt

Send, {Alt}

Send, {Alt Up}

;soundbeep, 500, 500

return

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New Here ,
Dec 19, 2014 Dec 19, 2014

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Use

#IfWinActive ahk_class Photoshop
Alt Up::
Send !
return

in http://www.autohotkey.com/. Works perfect.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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I've just tried using Alt + Scroll Wheel in CS5 12.0.1 (i.e., after the update), and I don't quite know whether this behavior has been changed, but I'm not seeing any problem continuing to work after the Alt-mouse wheel zoom operation.   The File menu gets highlighted, but I seem to be able to continue editing as though nothing has been interrupted.

Unfortunately now I don't have a pre-update copy to test with, so I can't quite say whether anything subtle has changed.

So...  Try the 12.0.1 update.  See if it helps with what you're doing.

Remember to close Photoshop after starting the updater and before proceeding with the update.

-Noel

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New Here ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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No, it's really messed up. Certain things will work fine, others will work after emitting an annoying Windows error beep. But the behaviour is definitely not correct. For instance, if I use alt+scroll to zoom in, then hit "L" to select the lasso tool, both the Lasso tool AND the Layers menu get selected, with the Layers menu opening up. This should definitely not happen and I can't recall ever seeing this type of behaviour with other applications where both a dedicated hotkey and a menu item are simultaneously activated. Or try alt+scroll to zoom, then ctrl+0 to zoom to fit. Doesn't work. The point is however hotkeys are being managed in CS5 has a serious bug in it which needs to be addressed by Adobe. It's just not working properly.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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Agreed, I tried Alt-Scroll Wheel then Ctrl-0 and...  Ding.  Not working.

Seems like Adobe is trying to be too many things at once.  It really needs a configuration item to disable the Windows accelerator key (Alt invokes menus) functionality.

-Noel

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Valorous Hero ,
Jul 23, 2010 Jul 23, 2010

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For me this is a very devastatingly annoying bug in SC5

To reproduce the problem. Make several changes and try to multiple undo (Alt + Ctrl + z) then (Shfit + Ctrl + z) and it will simply not work. In order to work you should press the keys carefully in this order (Ctrl + Alt + z). And it is not limited to this but in all hotkey that includes the Alt key - if you press Alt first you are screwed and to resume you have to press Alt again to toggle back and try again. This was not a problem with the previous versions and the hotkey combinations using Alt always worked as long as all keys are pressed regardless in what order. Now when using hotkey combinations that include Alt, I always have to send a look at the main menu to make sure there are no underlined letters by accidentally pressing the Alt key first.

By the way, regarding zooming, I like the new (Ctrl + Space bar + drag), great for my Wacom pen. It is also much more speedy and precise than mouse scrolling which zooms only at predefined steps.

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 10, 2010 Aug 10, 2010

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Yup, thats pretty much the whole point of this thread.  Somehow between CS4 and CS5, Adobe broke the Alt-key handler.

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New Here ,
Sep 15, 2010 Sep 15, 2010

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Hello,

first Iwant to thank you very much for working on this, it is a real shame that this issue got past the adobe developers.

This question might be better suited for the illustrator forum, but I'll give it a try here anyway. Is there any way to get the same script to work with illustrator? Again thanks so much

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 15, 2010 Sep 15, 2010

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@photty123:

You can download the alt-zoom bug fix here: [Note by moderator: use this link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cs5altfix/ as the others have expired] fix_cs5_scrollbug.zip (expired)

It is application-independent, and should work with any Adobe CS5 product.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 08, 2010 Oct 08, 2010

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Hi there i just got the same problem. The fix is working well, but it's not a perfect solution. So everybody has to start the Program and PS CS5 similar. Is there any new news about it? Maybe Adobe is working now for another update?

Some informations would be great!

Greetings

Pete

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 09, 2010 Oct 09, 2010

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I understand your frustration.  It is not a perfect solution by any means, more of a workaround at best.  I am not aware of any effort by Adobe to fix this issue yet.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 10, 2010 Oct 10, 2010

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The thing is that i and all the other paid a lot of money for a professional software. So many got this issue so i am asking myself where adobe is? PS CS5 should get an instant update if such a big problem appears as descibed.

I really think forward and hope some of Adobes staff are reading this.

However for now again a big thanks for this awesome tool! My respect belongs to you for that!

All the best

Pete

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Guest
Apr 25, 2014 Apr 25, 2014

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You can try this Alt+Space+Click Mosue .

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 07, 2010 Dec 07, 2010

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Just for Info, the Alt+Scroll Bug still happens, the new Patch didn't solved the Problem. I am very happy being a customer from such a great company! /Sarcasm off

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 29, 2010 Dec 29, 2010

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Thanks to jcmds for alerting me that the drop.io file hosting had gone offline.

I've re-uploaded the fix files as follows:

[note by Moderator: use this link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cs5altfix/ as the others have expired]

Scrollbug Fix (disables Alt-menu activation with mouse-wheel):  http://www.filedropper.com/fixcs5scrollbug

Disable Alt Menu (32-bit ONLY, may be the most robust option for 32-bit):  http://www.filedropper.com/old32-bitonlynophotoshopaltmenubar

Disable Alt Menu 2 (supports both 32-bit & 64-bit editions):  http://www.filedropper.com/nophotoshopaltmenubar_1

Remember that you can still use Alt+F to open the file menu, you must simply press them TOGETHER (pressing Alt by itself does nothing).

If you prefer to completely disable the Alt menu, and you have a 32-bit system, you may want to test both versions of the fix and use the one that works best with your configuration.

Happy holidays everyone!

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