InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by WayneK on 2016/10/23 11:00

I know there have been a number of improvements to the properties pane but I'm still finding it difficult to re-arrange the fields list. I brought this up last spring, I think, and things seem no better now. Maybe there's something I'm missing.

1) Drag and drop is still unreliable and awkward.

• I never know if I've really grabbed the field. When I try to drag, often there's no indication that it's being moved. The little arrow and line position indicators only show up sporadically.

• Often when I release the mouse button I'm surprised to find the item did actually move but not to where I wanted. Usually it ends up as a sub-item of another field, and it's a pain getting to move up one level.

• Often when I'm dragging up, the list won't scroll when I reach the top. I have to drop the field, scroll the list, then try to grab the field and move it again.

2) Why can't we have keyboard commands so can securely move fields, like we have in the grid (eg alt-arrow)? I've tried all the common combinations I could think of but nothing happens.

Wayne

Comments

I hope there's some keyboard commands that I don't know about because trying to move things around with drag and drop is very frustrating. I'm just trying to move my grids to the top of the list and it's already taken 5 times longer than it should and I'm nowhere near done. I absolutely cannot get a field to change levels with drag and drop. Can't be done. You also can't select multiple fields to move as a group (I did figure out a trick: make them subitems of another field, then move that field up).

Wayne

[quote=WayneK]

Wayne

[/quote]

I the mean time (i.e. while Pierre works on those problems) you can use the fields numbers in the fields properties dialog, and create hierarchies by selecting which field # is the parent of another field etc. It works (when I last used it).

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Armando,

Are you talking about changing the field ID number? I don't see any hierarchy reflected in the Field Properties Dialog, nor any way to create hierarchies. Properties that are subitems in the Properties Pane are not shown below their parent in the Field Properties Dialog. I also don't see any grids in the Field Properties Dialog, so I don't see how I can organize them there in any case.

Wayne

[quote=WayneK]

Armando,

Wayne

[/quote]

1- Concerning field's parent ID number (by determining a field's parent's ID, you create hierarchies) :

2- Any field in this dialog is clickable and dragable to a grid. Try it.

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

Armando,

Thanks. That's good info. I know you can drag fields to the grid except it doesn't work for me if it's a newly-created field (as noted on other thread).

Wayne

[deleted]

Wayne,

Dragging and dropping fields works in a very finicky fashion, I recorded a video for you showing how to get it to work consistently/reliably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBK0lG1DIho&feature=youtu.be

A-ha moment :) Thanks, David!

Edit: Armando and I posted at the same time.

"Are you talking about changing the field ID number? "

See attachment, he's talking about that as another way it can be done, however I think you'll find it more efficient to use drag and drop using the technique shown in the video above. I used to sometimes use the parent ID method until I figured out how to get drag and drop to work reliably.

David,

Thank you. I watched your video. That partly explains why sometimes it seems to work pretty good and sometimes not. For me, the going up doesn't always work either. All my fields were being dragged up and I wasn't getting the placement arrow on any of them. I went on to something else for a while, and when I came back it was working correctly again.

Wayne

Wayne, are you making sure to always drag with your mouse right on the field text? I know I sometimes used to make the mistake of assume that I could drag anywhere on the individual field bar (pass the text to the right). As long as I drag from the text area it works for me every time.

Yeah, I learned the hard way about being on the text. If you're not, it won't drag at all; it just scrolls. What I was getting was no indication that it was dragging at all except occasional flickers of the horizontal bar (no arrow at all). When I released the mouse, the field would move to near that point, always as a subitem of some existing field.

As I said, it's back to working exactly as you described: I get the arrow indicator when I drag up but not when I drag down. Your tips are helping a lot.

Wayne

This doesn't sound logical but I seem to remember that before I figured out the behavior I used to experiencing what you are describing. I'd keep dragging and dropping in the way a user normally would that doesn't work well and would reach a point where I'd give up and couldn't get it to work AT ALL. Then I'd close and reopen or go back to it later and get it to (half) work again.

So while Pierre may tell me I'm crazy :D it's like there was some bug where if I kept trying to move things around in the way a user normally would it would stop working altogether.

My best guess is that at some point maybe it started interpreting everything as a downward movement, causing that flickering. At least in my case once I figured out the trick to get it to work reliably that seemed to stop that bug from happening.

Last thought of the day...I've never tried to drag and drop with a scroll bar in the property pane. Can def see that making it much harder!