InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by Armando on 2017/12/11 14:31

[it's been like that for a long time -- before v100]

Using the down arrow to go from item to item after reaching the bottom of the grid (not the actual total list of displayed item, but really the bottom of what's *visible*) isn't smooth.

Once the focus reaches the bottom, it doesn't "scroll" smothly, one item at a time : it becomes somwwhat sluggish, jumpy/unsteady, and the focus is hard to follow.

It can suddenly jump 2 or 3 items above the bottom of the grid. This is especially true while word wrap is ON, but it also happens otherwise, if some other column has wordwrap on.

Really difficult to work on a long list. [If it's somehow hard to reproduce, I can make a screencast.]

Important note : the problem doesn't exist going upwards (up arrow).

It's possible that this occured after trying to fix some other scrolling bug, but I'm not sure if it's not worth it if it makes navigating a long list that difficult on the eye (and the brain).

Comments

Not sure what you call "long" but I just tried it on an outline of 300+ items with word wrap on. I didn't notice anything other than the expected "jumpiness" where multi-line items pass into and out of view.

Wayne

9.106b

[quote=WayneK]

Wayne

9.106b

[/quote]

Long = that is long enough so that it scrolls when you reach the bottom of visible grid area.

As I said, the jumpiness isn't the same going up than going down. Did you compare going up vs down?

I while provide a screencast.

The first time I tried it I couldn't find anything that seemed wrong other than the screen "jumps" when it displays an extra big item (which it has to do to show the whole item). But on a second try I found this:

1) I moved down the item list using the arrow key until I reached the bottom-most item visible on the screen.

2) When I continued to the next item, the screen scrolled just enough to show this one additional item. I repeated this several times with the same result.

3) But then something different happened: when I moved down one item, the screen refreshed and jumped down so that several more items were now visible below the selected one.

I presume this is the "jumpiness" you referred to? I played with it a little bit but couldn't find a pattern as to when it would move down one item at a time and when it would "jump".

Moving up the list, I couldn't get the jump to occur.

Wayne

> jumped down so that several more items were now visible below the selected one.

Yes, that's it. (You'll also see it in my screencast )

Thanks.

Perhaps hit PgDn to get you a larger space below the grid...

HTH !

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Thanks for the quick suggestion, but page down can't solve the problem. It's not just about scrolling, but about moving the focus with the down arrow *one item at a time*, steadily.

Page down actually makes it worse as it moves the focus one page down, not one *item* (or row) down And here page down actually doesn't even work properly when word wrap is on : it doesn't move in any consistent way : it skips items, etc..

It's not just about looking at items, but about having the focus on them... one item at a time. Any other solution is somewhat inefficient (e.g. 1- scrolling with the mouse to put items in the "proper" position, 2- clicking at the top of the grid, 3 then moving down with cursor keys..., and redoing that over and over).

I tried in a sample DB, and the jumpiness is obvious. Maybe you tried with items containing only one short line of text each?

In any case, here’s a screencast.

1- If you completely scroll down the grid, and focus on the "first" item at the top of the grid's visible area (so: many items invisible at the top), and then move upwards with the up arrow, one item at a time : the cell position is steady, sticking to the top of the window/grid. There are no items suddenly appearing between the border and the focused item.

2- In comparison, going down with the arrow, one item at a time is inconsistent. Items appear between the border of the window/grid, and the focused item. It's jumpy, hard to read when you're going through a list and performing operations on each item at a relatively quick pace. (Understandably, focus "jumping" is a problem for most people -- a quick look at the forum will confirm that statement.)

*To IQ's "defense", Excel always suffered from the exact same problem* in word wrap mode -- as it is a problem. Wonder if has to do with approximating the row's height with the numbers of chars inserted, instead of first retrieving the actual height before moving down, and at least leaving one part of the cell stable : the bottom or the top... Not sure, but everything moves, the top, the bottom. Cell pop corn!

Don't know how to circumvent the problem in Excel, but there’s an ad hoc workaround :set a static row height on the fly whenever you need it (Home>Format>Row Height, or Alt,O,R,E). It doesn't always let you see the whole content, obviously, but more than just a line, if you want (I like 5-8, depending on the width of the column, which is usually enough to get enough content from a multiline cell).

Hi Armando,

Thanks for the screencast, that explains it very well,

As for the issue as you go down, the key is to look at the top to understand what is going on.

Currently, the grid always displays whole item, not parts of an item, so if the item at the top has many lines, when it becomes non-visible, the grid moves up by an amount equal to the item height.

This has always been like this, perhaps you're using IQ more as a writing tool, entering larger amount of text in each cell.

I'll see if this can be improved somehow.

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

You're right, it's been like that for a long time -- since the beginning! I wasn't sure, so I preferred to refrain saying that.

I can effectively see that the top of the grid has been given priority. The logic should probably be reversed depending on the direction. But I can also see why it could be a bad idea, in some cases.

If fixable :

- Maybe pressing a modifier key while scrolling down (ctrl+shift)?

- Or an option like the one you provided in the status bar for keeping the cursor inside the cell while editing.

If not really fixable:

- Another way out (as I previously suggested, using Excel as an example), would be able to set a fixed row height on the fly, for a given column in a grid. That would do it, even if not ideal.

(The "fix" would also be useful for page-down, as that one doesn't work well either with unequal items heights. It’s actually even worse.)

Well I'll see if anything can be done

For now of course, the best solution is probably to roll the mouse wheel to give you some space below the current item

That gets me thinking, how about a command to scroll up/down ?

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

In the next version, I'll try the following for up/down arrows:

None: Focus Next / Previous item
Shift: Select items
Ctrl: Scroll view up / down
Ctrl + Shift: Focus Next / Previous item + Scroll
Alt: Move items Up / Down
Shift + Alt: Focus Next / Previous sibling
Shift + Alt + Ctrl: Focus Next / Previous sibling, add sibling if at end

Modifier	Action
None	Focus Next / Previous item
Shift	Select items
Ctrl	Scroll view up / down
Ctrl + Shift	Focus Next / Previous item + Scroll
Alt	Move items Up / Down
Shift + Alt	Focus Next / Previous sibling
Shift + Alt + Ctrl	Focus Next / Previous sibling, add sibling if at end

The number of lines to scroll is set in Tools > Options > Grid

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Thanks Pierre!

(Maybe an option to define a fixed height/number of lines in a ~~column~~ row, on the fly, could also be useful. Eventually)