It's Not a Bug It's a Feature: Yahoo Music Engine Transparency

I'll be the first to admit that my use of the mouse is often very sloppy. I hit both mouse buttons when I only mean to hit one, constantly click stuff 5-10 pixels away from where I want and otherwise make a fool of myself whenever I have that plastic hockey puck in my hand.

So, it should come as no suprise (though it did) that a certain behavior of Yahoo's Music Engine software that's been bugging me actually embodies a programming cliche: it's not a bug; it's a feature. See, I like having YME in it's mini mode, where it doesn't dominate the screen, but I can still rate songs as I find my toe tapping along. However, it has been semi-transparent in that mode for several weeks apparently on its own. It's transparent enough to be too hard to read over some applications.

So, this morning, I did a quick search to see if I was just an idiot not seeing the setting somewhere. Sort of.

Turns out, the mouse scroll wheel controls the transparency of the thing in mini mode. So, my sloppy mouse skills made the darn thing transparent. But, some careful scrolling of the wheel in the other direction, followed by some predictable back and forth has left me with a fully controlled music engine.

This is really nice because I can completely hide the thing when I'm not interacting with it and just scroll up to see it again. And, I can correct my own stupidity, always a useful feature in software.