Opening a second copy of a floating toolbar?

[njmorf]

I've got a floating, locked, transparent, horizontal toolbar for launching games and associated tools. It's always open, but when I play games in fullscreen windowed mode, the game obviously covers up the toolbar. If I want to access the toolbar again, I'm out of luck: Windows+D hides all windows, including the toolbar, so I either have to close the game or fiddle with its settings to move its window or temporarily turn off windowed mode.

I'm currently (and possibly temporarily) using a second monitor, on which the games are never displayed. I've tried opening a second copy of the toolbar on the second monitor (vertical, due to space limitations), but it behaves oddly, I assume since the first copy's still open (specifically: it never seems to be the right size, chopping part of the last button off; mousing over the buttons highlights the next button down; opening the vertical bar snaps it back to horizontal orientation every time).

I want the second copy to be a copy, not a duplicate, so I don't have to edit two bars. I've tried creating a separate bar with a single button to open the second copy, but it understandably tends to get confused over which bar it's supposed to be working with, given that they're both named the same. The code of that button is:

Toolbar "NJM - Games Dock" AUTOCLOSE FLOAT=autohide,locked,vertical  TOGGLE

It will open and close a bar, but just whichever version was last opened (and it sometimes closes both).

I've considered making a second, uniquely-named bar and running a batch file to duplicate part of the original bar (i.e. the buttons, without the rest of the configuration) into the new bar every time the computer starts, but I'm hoping there's a better way. Is there some way to have a toolbar button open a different toolbar as a menu, rather than as a separate toolbar? That would probably solve my problem for me.

I am, of course, open to suggestions from those who know more than I. Thanks in advance.

[Jon]

There should be no problem with a second copy of a floating toolbar (it's designed to work). If you resize the second copy does it "snap" to the right size?

[njmorf]

Both bars are normally locked and look like this:

Primary bar:

Secondary bar (note that the Appearance | Vertical option is not selected):

After closing and reopening Opus, they look like this (note the missing green button. Additionally, the borders of the bar are not being drawn correctly: you can see that bottom few pixels have been cut off of the buttons on the horizontal bar and the right edge from the vertical bar):

If I mouse over a button in the secondary bar, this happens (the mouse position is in the normal place, just above the tooltip: the button below has the highlight):

When I open Customise mode, I see this (obviously the vertical bar is now more horizontal. Note also that on the horizontal bar, the borders are asymmetrical at this point):

Once I unlock the bars and reshape them, the border goes back to normal on the horizontal bar (though none of the buttons need moving on that bar). The vertical bar does not snap back into shape, I have to do it manually.

If I leave either bar unlocked and then restart Opus, that bar appears normal - no missing buttons, no asymmetric border, no incorrect highlight. Works with either or both bars unlocked, and only seems to mess up locked bars. If I hold down shift over the messed-up secondary bar, I see this:

For what it's worth, I had a similar "moving buttons" problem a few years back and raised it here. I don't recall having the same highlighting problem as I'm seeing now, and certainly didn't say so in the thread. The "solution" in that thread, holding shift, choosing Save from the context menu, doesn't seem to be available any more.

Since I'm using transparent backgrounds, I think my work-around will just be to leave the bars unlocked: I can't move them by accident, whether they're locked or not.
NJM - Games Dock.dop (29.9 KB)

[njmorf]

Forgot to say, but I expect you saw: I attached a copy of the bar.

[Leo]

If you haven't already, turning on the Vertical option in the vertical toolbar's Appearance menu may improve its layout/sizing behavior.

Another thing to try is saving the toolbar positions (in case it isn't set to auto-save them), which is done from the menu shown below.

Do the save after making the Vertical change and doing any desired resizing, positioning and locking of the floating toolbars.

[njmorf]

Auto-save was already turned on. I'd set the secondary bar to vertical last night (to make the menus appear in a different place, rather than to address the layout issue) and left the bars unlocked and they seemed to be behaving normally. I've just locked the vertical bar, saved it manually and restarted Opus and (so far) it's appearing correctly. I'll keep an eye on things, see what happens.

Thanks for the help.

[njmorf]

Current behaviour: the vertical copy, which is locked and set to vertical, is appearing without its bottom button. The highlighting issue is no longer a problem, though. This is after I've manually saved the floating toolbars (even though I still have autosave enabled).
The horizontal copy, which is also locked but obviously not set to vertical, seems to be fine: no missing buttons, no highlight errors.

The vertical bar is still behaving correctly if I don't lock it. If there's a bug that's causing this, it must be something to do with the locking process.