Mail does not respond to mouse clicks properly
This bug in Mail started in Lion, and has continued (or possibly worsened in some instances) in Mountain Lion. Has anybody heard of a fix?
Basically Mail acts like it is freezing, but in fact is not handling mouse clicks properly.
1) If Mail is "behind" another active app window, clicking in the content area of the Mail window will not activate the window until you click a SECOND time.
2) Once you get Mail to respond by clicking it the second time, if you click back and forth between it and the window in front (e.g. between safari and mail, the clicks DO register, but Mail acts as if the click position is offset from where you actually click. The offset seems to vary and I haven't found a consistent link between the offset and where I click in mail or the other window, or the relative positions of the two windows.
3) When you try the 2) trick on elements that can scroll, you realise that as well as an offset, Mail is trying to "drag" instead of respond to a click, so the list of mail folders pulls and bounces back, or the list of mail scrolls, or sometimes if everything lines up, an image of an envelope appears and moves as if you are trying to drag an email from one place to another.
4) Clicking on the title/button/toolbar of Mail ALWAYS brings it to the front...
5) If you bring Mail to the front by repeatedly clicking on the content area (and yes, sometimes it takes more than one click...) and as the FIRST thing you do after activating the window, click one of the buttons in the toolbar (e.g. the trash or delete button), it will depress, and stay down, as if you have done a "press and hold" instead of a "click". Clicking on the button again will complete the action, but clicking elsewhere in the title bar will release the button and the action will not occur, just as if you had held the mouse button down and dragged off the button before releasing, which is appropriate behaviour IF you had held the mouse button down in the first place...
6) If you activate Mail by clicking in the content area, then clicking a second time in the content area, then continue to single click around the content, it behaves as if it is one step behind you, responding as if the LAST click is the click you just made. Interestingly the "button down state" seems to persist, because for instance clicking on a succession of emails will highlight each email in turn, but the content of the email on the right will not update with each click, only updating when you "break out of the cycle" with a double click or a title bar click.
These are all REPRODUCIBLE, even after a restart.
They ONLY happen in Mail.
I have tried mouse, track pad, turning off bluetooth, so I don't think these things are related.
SO...
I THINK that MAIL, since Lion, has an issue with its event handler, where MouseUp events are either lost or mishandled, so that clicks are being registered as drags, or the "button down" state is not updated or something...
With the above description I feel the Mail programming team should be able to track down the bug in minutes and fix it.
Apple - feel free to get in contact with me and I will let you access my machine via remote desktop or teamviewer or something to see the bug in action.
It is time to fix this annoying behaviour.
Message was edited by: jaffle Worked out that 2 and 6 are related - the offset isn't an offset at all - it is the thing you last clicked on!
