list control

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incoronado
Senior Member
Posts: 153
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 12:30 am
Location: San Diego, CA

list control

Post by incoronado »

It would be nice to have a double-click ability when selecting items in a list. I picture saving the selected value to a second property in the same way the single-click selection works. This would allow us to add drill down abilities in the lists. Tasks could be set up to trigger on double-clicks.

One other little bug about list control backgrounds...

I noticed if you use a vertical gradient as a custom background in the list control it doesn't work right. It would be nice if the the background remains static when scrolling.
Richard Naninck
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Post by Richard Naninck »

I second that.
Having only the single click option sometimes creates problems while building a list. If a list is built, the first entry gets always selected hence will carry out the single click command. This can be used as a feature, but also prevents an alphalist from nesting from one list to the next since refreshing a list would automatically select the next list. I overcome this problem by using an extra button used to carry out the next level command.

I also think that using the TAB as a separator between the hidden and visual part mostly is a disadvantage because it becomes difficult to display texts which contain TABs. Everything before the TAB is hidden and when displaying multiple TABs in one text, the whole thing gets out of order. A less commonly used character or combination would be more flexible. If this were ever to be changed, I guess many people would have to redo their lists making this a nasty upgrade which is not backwards compatible.
markd
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Joined: Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:32 pm

Post by markd »

I haven't used lists yet, but one way to do a seamless upgrade might be to expose a picker for choosing or setting the separator, and have it default to tab.

That way the behavior stays consistent, but for someone putting in a new element, it could be changed...... does that make sense?

Markd
Richard Naninck
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Post by Richard Naninck »

Yes and No maybe?!
Whenever a TAB is used in a list, the stuff before the TAB is hidden and after the TAB is visible. This goes per line until a LineFeed is set in the line. Then the logic resets for the next line. Whenever multiple tabs are used in a single line, all following lines need the exact amount of tabs for the list to work properly. (Although it seems to me).
Example:

vbLF & PropertyVal1 & vbTAB & "This is a Text" & vbTAB & "Next piece of Info" & _

vbLF & PropertyVal2 & vbTAB & vbTAB & "Next piece of Info 2" & _

The "*S-" could be used to select a specific line and needs to be in the beginning.

So having somekind of picker would be a good option, but I am just not sure what other effects this would have on the TAB. Maybe Scott can elaborate a bit here.

There are plenty of work arounds where for example the first line which gets selected could have a propertyval before the TAB that acutally doesn't trigger anything, but sometimes it is nice to have a one click to select a line and display info on it and have a double click to go one level down.

Eample:

Music playlist.
One click would display the info on the selected album and a double click would display all the tracks on that album. The albums in the list are then replaced by the tracks from the selected album making an alphalist multi purpose.
Circe640
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Location: Columbus, OH
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Post by Circe640 »

1) I would like to see a config item for the list box that would turn auto-select on or off when the panel is entered. Most of the time the current auto-select over-writes the current persistant data so you can't continue where you left off from a prior session. There are times however when it is handy and even downright necessary.

2) Button function along the lines of previous where the state of the button is controlled by one property ( graphical images displayed) but the button changes a different property. This would enable turning the visible presence of the button on a panel on or off. ( A transparent image wold make the button disappear - non selectable)
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