About addons and accidents

[sirinsidiator]

I had an extremely frustrating experience this week where I effectively lost 40k gold because items got bound to my character when they should not have been.

The first case happened when I wanted to attach an item to a mail in order to free some space in my inventory. I opened the mail menu, moved the mouse over the item I wanted to send and pressed E like usual. But for some reason the option to "Add to Mail" was missing and instead it equipped the item. I checked the context menu on a different item and the entry was also missing. Only after closing and reopening the menu it reappeared.
I didn't care much about it then, because it was just one worthless item that I wanted to deconstruct anyways.

The second and for me extremely frustrating case happened a few days later when I wanted to sell a valuable ring (~40k) to a guild store.
I previously bought it on a guild store and still had it inside the purchase mail. As I didn't have a need for it anymore I wanted to resell it and thus took it from the mail, opened the guild store at the banker in Mournhold, switched to the sell tab, moved the mouse over the ring and pressed E. Instead of showing the sell interface, the ring got equipped and bound.
I immediately contacted customer support and they told me they cannot help me in this case because they are not able to unbind items (9 month after launch they still don't have proper tools!).

Why am I writing this in this forum you ask? Well, it's because this all happened because of addons.
One might argue now that it might be caused by something I wrote myself, but I am pretty sure that I do not change the interface in any way that might cause this behavior.
I also never had this problem until I installed a few additional addons recently (FCO ItemSaver, JunkIt, Shopkeeper).

I suspect that the bug might be caused by ItemSaver because it changes the context menu, but I haven't looked into its code and also was not able to reproduce the issue since then.
One thing that I noticed, was that in both cases I was experiencing lag when I opened the menu (I always have the fps and latency meter on).

What I hope for the future by writing this, is that other addon authors see this as a warning and take extra care when they do things that might change how the default interface behaves.

I also hope that we can add a feature to ItemSaver (or make a dedicated addon) to prevent items from being equipped involuntarily, because this is something where customer support can't and won't help at all.

TL;DR: Items got bound when they shouldn't have been. Now I am extremely frustrated and want to prevent it from happening again.

[circonian]

That would be frustrating, sorry to hear about that.

JunkIt does not modify the keybindStrip in any way. It does nothing with mail and only sets a rowCallback in the trading house for research icons.

I did a quick search in all of the shopkeeper addons & FCO ItemSaver, but I didn't see any references to the keybindStrip or anything that looked like it had been modified. (I only did a few quick keyword searches though)

[Baertram]

Sorry to read this sirinsidiator.
I hope it wasn't FCOItemSaver. I never experienced this "buggy behaviour" before and noone has reported an issue so far.

@Circonian
FCOItemSaver is not changing the keybinds directly but using the game's context menu methods to do so, as this will help gamepad players and mouse players.

Short explanation:

OnMouseEnter the item:
-Is the anti-destroy/anti-sell/anti-deconstruct etc. settings enabled?
->Is the item marked with any icon?
-->Remove the context menu entry to destroy/add to mail/add to shop/add to deconstruction/...

By removing the context menu entry the standard behaviour of the game is: Remove the keybind for the same function (e.g. destroy) as well.

@sirinsidiator
Do you remember if the item you wanted to sell was marked with any icon from FCOItemSaver?
You said you took it from a mail.
Did you mark it manually afterwards, like with the "sell" icon?
If it was not researchable for one of your characters or it was an ornate icon (assumed you had enabled the automatic marking of these items in the settings and you are using ResearchAssistant) there shouldn't be any change done to the context menu and the keybindings.

I'l have a look if I can rebuild this. Maybe I can implement a security question for equippable items that are not bound too. I always wanted to add this after I have equipped a set part accidently that was crafted for another char o0

[Baertram]

I've updated FCOItemSaver with a dialog asking you if you want to bind an itemto your acocunt if the item is bindable and not already bound.

You are able to enable/disable it in the settings.

Hope this helps to prevent those erros in the future, even if the error did not come from my addon.

I'll release it soon after some more tests.

Edit:
Release now as version 0.5.1a

[sirinsidiator]

Originally Posted by Baertram Sorry to read this sirinsidiator. I hope it wasn't FCOItemSaver. I never experienced this "buggy behaviour" before and noone has reported an issue so far.

Figured it would be something rare.
Maybe it's even unique to my combination of addons + lag.
I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I will continue and try to find the reason.

Originally Posted by Baertram Do you remember if the item you wanted to sell was marked with any icon from FCOItemSaver? You said you took it from a mail. Did you mark it manually afterwards, like with the "sell" icon? If it was not researchable for one of your characters or it was an ornate icon (assumed you had enabled the automatic marking of these items in the settings and you are using ResearchAssistant) there shouldn't be any change done to the context menu and the keybindings.

The first item was marked as sell, but when I tried I could not add it to the mail. I disabled the marking on all items that I planned to send and went back to the mail screen and then it got bound.
I don't use automatic marking or ResearchAssistant.

In the second case I did nothing else between taking it from the mail and opening the guild store.
I logged in and was in Cyrodiil, went to Mournhold via Wayshrine and entered the bank without doing anything else before.

Originally Posted by Baertram I've updated FCOItemSaver with a dialog asking you if you want to bind an itemto your acocunt if the item is bindable and not already bound. You are able to enable/disable it in the settings. Hope this helps to prevent those erros in the future, even if the error did not come from my addon. I'll release it soon after some more tests. Edit: Release now as version 0.5.1a

Thank you very much for adding it so fast. I will certainly use it in the future.
Once I am able to reproduce what happened that day I'll let you know.

[Baertram]

If the first item was marked for selling the context menu maybe stripped the primary keybinding (something like add to mail or add to deconstruct window etc.) and the second entry got the primary one.
If the second one was "Equip" this could have been the reason then.

The second item, if there was no marked from FCOItemSaver, should still have the normal "Add to ..." primary keybinding. It updates on mouse-over the element and will then remove the context menu entries. If you mouse-over an item that is not marked with any marker from FCOItemSaver the context menu will not be changed, and so the keybindings wont be changed.
Maybe it was really a lag or some false positive from SavedVariables (item was marked in the past and was still in the SavedVariables). But you'd probably have seen an marker icon then.
I hope this won't happen again and was not happening because of my addon.

If the new feature "Anti-Equip" works well this should be fixed then.

Originally Posted by sirinsidiator Figured it would be something rare. Maybe it's even unique to my combination of addons + lag. I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I will continue and try to find the reason. The first item was marked as sell, but when I tried I could not add it to the mail. I disabled the marking on all items that I planned to send and went back to the mail screen and then it got bound. I don't use automatic marking or ResearchAssistant. In the second case I did nothing else between taking it from the mail and opening the guild store. I logged in and was in Cyrodiil, went to Mournhold via Wayshrine and entered the bank without doing anything else before. Thank you very much for adding it so fast. I will certainly use it in the future. Once I am able to reproduce what happened that day I'll let you know.