Thunderbird no longer passing text contents correctly?
I use WordWeb, which is a popup dictionary. Always before, when activating on a word withing Thunderbird, WordWeb was passed the word under the cursor. With version 24.3.0, in an outbound message, WordWeb often gets nonsense like "UrlHelper" or a blank field.
Addendum: New information. This has something to do with the Windows focus. While Thunderbird is on top and should have the focus, it apparently is not handling passed requests from other apps. What is happening here is that WordWeb queries Thunderbird about screen contents and some other app altogether ends up answering that request inappropriately. Thunderbird definitely has a problem here.
Modified by hogwaump
All Replies (8)
If Thunderbird does not have the focus, how can it have a problem? It is not getting the request is my guess.
But in an attempt to understand I have downloaded and installed this product and I see nothing that integrates it into Thunderbird at all. There is firefox integration via an add-on.
My windows programming is much out of date and my memory not so perfect anymore. I may be saying it wrong. WordWeb seems to work pretty well with almost any software. When it does screw up, it is generally minor garble, getting a few letters wrong. With thunderbird I see a sudden change. WordWeb used to work, now it doesn't at all, and the info request is funneled off to some other seemingly random window. Maybe this version of thunderbird is not getting/seeing/processing the request. I don't know. But I do know that it is a thunderbird issue. Some windows signal is not getting handled right.
I will try again... How do you use this wordweb thing. I can not get it to do anything useful.
It sits there. If I highlight a word and select copy and then paste it into the wordweb thing it looks up what I have pasted.
That does not sound like what your describing.
You don't highlight. I think the default trigger is [<ctrl><leftclick>] -- that's what mine works with. Just put the cursor anywhere on the target word and try that trigger. It is configurable, so if that doesn't work check the wordweb options settings.
Ok, it's working like a charm for me. So whatever the issue is I think it might be local to just you.
You might start Thunderbird in safe mode Help menu Alt+H) > Restart with add-ons disabled just to confirm it is not an add-on acting up.
Other wise I suggest you restart windows in Safe mode with networking and try it in that mode, see if it works ok. If it does it is something that loads when windows does, but not Thunderbird. Likely suspects are A/V software, firewalls, password managers, disk encryption software etc.
Did you try it in an outbound message? Mine works fine with inbound text.
I see the issue, but I don't understand the cause.
It is a very weird bug, to be sure. Windows programming coming back to me somewhat, and I am having a hard time postulating a mechanism to make it behave that way.