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Sep 17, 2020
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London UK
Hello all,
I have just started having this "glitch" on my laptop, I suspect it is the result of a windows update, but was wondering if anyone else has had this.
black bar.jpg
This is the normal search bar with the dark theme enabled. For some reason I cannot work out, it does not happen when I do the same thing twice, it turns into:-
white bar.jpgWhen I move the mouse pointer over it, it returns to the normal dark theme!
Any thoughts?
 
Check if there is an update for your graphics driver. I think something in the latest W10 update is incompatible with older AMD drivers. AMD issued a new version for some cards a couple of weeks ago.
 
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Files are SO MUCH EASIER to sort BY DATE when you use yyyy-mm-dd ... that's my 2.45 Canadian cents / 0.014 GBP (exchange rates subject to wide variance as the hours and days and months and years go by)

------------------
Edit 01 July 2021 = 20210701:

(a couple of digressions indented)

I didn't think enough about what I wrote before I wrote it and I said what I didn't mean, leaving what I meant to be inferred, which probably left many people thinking different things. I was referring to the ability to sort by date when sorting by filename (alphanumerically). I used to far prefer the / character (or nothing) between segments of dates, but when ISO 8601 became a standard, I started accepting and using a hyphen (or using nothing, as in the above YYYYMMDD example) in filenames. To save time at the pharmacy (chemist) or a medical appointment, when they ask for my date of birth, I supply it as d m yy because that is what is fastest for them, which in turn is fastest for me.

Ron's response was clearer and at least one of his points hit the nail on the head. Regardless, wherever you live in the world, one standard will probably work better for you than another because that's what is most common or what has become habit for you. If that differs from what you prefer, you might have to modify your personal file system for your own usage. (e.g. many programs/apps think I'll be happiest with m/d/yy based on my location, but when sorting lists of files, sometimes the dates work better for me when I force all numbers to be at least two digits long (prepending 0 to the single-digit days or months). That also looks better, IMO, with superior alignment, particularly when using a proportional font.

Did I mention that I really like monospaced fonts? Modern GUI-based operating systems have some very attractive proportional fonts, but at times—usually when using a sans-serif font—it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between a I and a l and a 1. Also, I prefer monospaced fonts for my command prompts/shells, despite the fact that there are some rather nice fonts with easily-differentiable o/O/0 and l/I/1/| characters, among others, when using a GUI... but I'm getting way off the topic of date systems and file sorting, which is OT for this thread, overall, anyway.​

Use what works best for you and you'll probably be more efficient (efficiency is something I like (concision and precision also, though my tendency to say and type more than is necessary, evident from what I've said so far in this edit, belies that 😳)). I think we should do things on our own computers in the ways that work best for ourselves, where possible (working with other people might require adjustments, or certain preferences might not be supported in a required piece of hardware or software).

Accommodations for various OSs and software sometimes have to be made in this worldwide community of coders and end users, but that's another discussion and I won't get into that here.

Since my brain injury (and as I've experienced this continuing process of aging), I've learned that thinking about things from different perspectives and changing things to avoid establishing permanent habits helps keep my brain healthy and "plastic" and my thoughts malleable. That doesn't change what I believe will be most efficient in a filename to keep it sorted alphabetically and by date in the largest number of cases, but learning and using new control schemes in games and ways of using my muscles for routine tasks will, I hope, help keep me thinking better as I age and facilitate thinking from different perspectives more easily.​

(Hopefully) final thought restated: Use whatever method works best for you.
 
Last edited:
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Hi all, I haven't been following this thread. I literally just read the last few posts. So, I'm definitely not getting involved in a "date debate". But, I will just note that all the different date formats do get confusing, especially when the numbers are such that there's more than one way to interpret the date.

I'm in the USA, so my system date is set for MM/DD/YYYY which is common. BUT, I frequently embed a YYYY-MM-DD date in filenames. This very neatly sorts by date when the files are sorted by name. Also, if you put the date later in the string, you can have the name sort take priority, but any duplicate file names are sub sorted by date. This is sometimes very helpful. It's also one way to do version control. For example Rons Tech Doc 2021-06-27 vs Rons Tech Doc 2021-06-28. You can leave out the dashes and get the same result. I don't think you can put slashes (/) in filenames. If exact time is important for version control, you can also embed the time in the filename in 24 hr HH-MM-SS format. IE Rons Tech Doc 2021-06-27 14-22-15. So that would be 2:22 PM and 15 seconds. You can also leave the dashes out of that. I don't know if you can put colons in a file name.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. :cool: Ron
 
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My file names often go by or contain: 21y06m27d12h45m00s
Depending on the situation it's just the date or the time or both.

Using Macro Express, just typing "##dt" auto-replaces that text with the above.

FileDateTime.Cmd
Code:
@Echo OFF
EndLocal

if "x%~1x" neq "xx"  goto %~1
goto %~n0

:FileDateTime
CALL :FileDate
CALL :FileTime
Set FileDateTime=%FileDate%_%FileTIme%
echo FileDateTime: %FileDateTime%
goto :EOF

:FileDate
for /f "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%a in ("%date%") do  Set FileDate=%%cy%%am%%bd
Set FileDate=%FileDate:~2%
echo FileDate: %FileDate%
goto :EOF

:FileTime
for /f "tokens=1,2,3 delims=:." %%a in ("%time%") do  Set FileTime=%%ah%%bm%%cs
Set FileTime=%FileTime: =0%
echo FileTime: %FileTime%
goto :EOF

This only works when Windows is set to the standard format for the United States.
 
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Seems they patched it quicker than I expected.

But what I didn't realize is that the issue was present in the pre-release versions of the update as well except, they went and released the flawed official update anyway. (DOH!)
 
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