[CODE] Problems with Ext.LoadMask and Modal Windows

Anyone who has used the Ext.LoadMask object with a modal window (basically a popup that prevents you from interacting with anything outside the window) that spawns another mask will know that there is a known bug in ExtJS that doesn't mask the modal window automatically.

Example:

Say you're looking at an online menu for a restaurant, like something you would see on GrubHub. You select one of the dishes and it pops up another window that asks you what kind of rice you want with it, simultaneously graying out everything around the popup. That rice-selection popup is a "modal window".

Imagine you select your rice choice (white, of course) and press the OK button. A small loading icon appears, a mask appears over the modal window, and a second later the modal window and both masks go away, leaving you on your original menu window, with your dish and rice option selected.

That's what should happen. In ExtJS that second mask doesn't overlay the modal window, meaning you can click things while it is doing work in the background. It probably won't affect the operation, but it's tacky and unprofessional.

I've run into this at work, and an easy solution that worked for me is

Ext.WindowMgr.getActive().setDisabled( true );

That will (usually) get the topmost window, likely the modal window you are looking at, and disable it which causes it to gray out as if masked. Call this right after the user hits the OK button and you should be all set!

[GAMES] Figuring out your saved Nethack character name on Windows

One of my coworkers is a dual major in computer science and game design, and recently we've been talking about some of the games that set the groundwork for the games we know today. He started talking about the game Rogue and the games that built off of it, called "roguelikes". Basically, they're text-based dungeon crawling games with randomized dungeons and permanent death. Diablo was actually heavily influenced (according to the developers) by the most popular roguelike, NetHack.

Of course, I had to try it out, and now I'm pretty much addicted.

But this post isn't about my propensity for gaming addiction, it's to actually provide some useful information. I got the furthest I'd ever been last night and saved and went to bed.

The problem is that I couldn't remember my character name. I'd started and died so many times I was just hitting random keys for name creation. However, you can look at the save file and figure out your character name.

On Windows XP at least, it will be saved into the same directory as the NetHack executable. The file format is

WINDOWS_USERNAME-charname.sav

For example,

Administrator-AwesomeValkyrie.sav

Just type in "AwesomeValkyrie" in the load screen and you're all set!

I hope that helps someone out there who looked up the solution to this problem and only ran into *nix answers :-)