[Done] Mouse interaction in the Form Designer

[Michael Vogel]

As I have seen already, the form designer will often do a perfect job, it's just me, who doesn't see the right check box to understand how to use this tool. So I want to ask to get more information what happens (tooltips, status text, different cursor shapes etc.), when certain actions are done with the form designer. This would help different user types to work with this tool.

Part I - observations: I did not spend enough time with the Form Designer, so there are (still) some surprising results, when I try too do different things. For instance, I tried to choose multiple elements (shift or control is commonly used for such things), for instance three buttons...

1) I tried to make a rectangle around the three buttons whily holding down the mouse button - okay, maybe to optimistic.
2) Now I tried that: I click on the first, hold down shift, click on the second button, nothing happens.
3) Okay, let's try to hold control, a click on the second button, yes, fine, I move the mouse to the third button - oh, the elements are following my cursor???
4) One additional click, fine the button are (nearly) on their place again - so I hold control, press two times (!) on the third button, I understand it now...
... or not, because when I click on a fourth button now, it will also be selected, how to stop that mode?

There is no feedback, in which mode you are: creating an element, selecting an element or (the strange) multi select mode - which would be a help for me. Different cursor shapes, an icon or status text in the form viewer, everthy additional inforrmation would be fine.

For beginners, it could also be confusing, that you find a 'Cursor' entry in 'All Forms', 'Common Controls' etc. At the first moment, I thought, it would be possible to define different cursor shapes for my program or something like that. In fact, it is no form and no control, it is used to stop creating new elements.


Part II - issues. A feedback could also be useful when swapping between 'Toolbox' and 'Objects' dialog, or would you know what will happen, when you do this (let's say, I did a form with three buttons already, see the 'Toolbox' with the 'Button' form selected):

1) I click on 'Objects' and show the complete Windows_0 tree, then I click on 'Button_0', hold down the control key and click on 'Button_1' in the object tree.

2) I double click on the Form and keep the mouse button down, move the mouse cursor and release the mouse button.

3) I click on 'Button_2' in the object tree.

Would you be able to answer these questions when doing the three steps above: Which buttons will be selected in the form? Which object will be selected in the object tree? And which object will be seen in the lower part of the form designer?

Tip: there is one step, where you will not see the same button selected in the object tree as seen below in the edit area, and another step will show two selected buttons in the object tree.

[Polo]

Using the object treeview, you are only able to select one gadget at a time.

Indeed, to select several gadgets, you use the Ctrl (Cmd on OS X) key and the mouse, which should work fine?

[luciano]

Indeed, to select several gadgets, you use the Ctrl (Cmd on OS X) key and the mouse, which should work fine?

I believe Michael was referring to this:
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 22&t=52489

[Michael Vogel]

I believe Michael was referring to this:
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 22&t=52489

Luciano, you're right - Luis seems to have had similar observations.

Using the object treeview, you are only able to select one gadget at a time.

Additionally, when doing all three steps in 'Part II', you can see, that you can select several gadgets in the 'tree view' because of a bug.

[Polo]

Fixed.