The Sliding Click

General
1

You have defined a window with many controls.
Positions of them are very precise.
You spent a lot of time to place them.
And then, you click on one control : just a small click, very short, to edit the control.
And then what ? → the control is moved ! No, you are sure you didn’t want to move the mouse during the click. Despite that, the control is moved !

In fact, during the short click, the mouse can’t stay exactly at the same place (especially the Apple mouse).

So, question : Why not waiting a small time (0,5 second or more) before starting detecting a mouse move ?
We should have the click first, and then, the mouse move is detected and every one wi’ll be happy.

This “Sliding click" is a dayly problem for us. We have to take care each time we click on a control…

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2

If you wish to prevent this, you can lock controls by selecting them then clicking the Lock button in the visual editor toolbar:
image

3

This is a solution, but can cause problems too.

4

Sure, there are scenarios where this functionality is undesirable or doesn’t work exactly as one might expect, but it should get the job done more or less.

I personally don’t select controls by clicking in the visual editor often and, instead, select them via the navigator unless I actually plan to move them.

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5

It can be the quickest way to get to the control in the Navigator, so you can e.g. examine its event handlers.

6

Sure, it’s just not the way I do it, and doesn’t present me with the associated issues.

7

When I see that happen I just do a quick Cmd+Z to undo the move (well, suppose it is Ctrl+Z for Windows…) then more carefully click again. But I also tend to select in the navigator when convenient, for this very reason.

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8

Yep : CMD-Z is a friend…
Selection in the navigator is an other solution too but can be tricky if there are plenty of controls : often, their names displayed in the navigator can’t help us to choose the good control.

9

I don’t know if you already do this, but I usually try to name my controls something indicative of their purpose (with the exception of labels – unless they have some function or will change value as part of a process – which I toss in a ControlSet on Desktop and just ignore on Web). It helps a great deal in these scenarios.

  • Button1 → btnOK
  • Label1 → lblStatus
  • ListBox1 → lstMembers
  • PopupMenu1 → pmType

Or, more recently, as I’ve been spending too much time in JavaScript:

  • Button1 → buttonOK
  • Label1 → labelStatus
  • ListBox1 → listMembers
  • PopupMenu1 → popupType
10

oh yes, I do that :slight_smile:
But if you have 2 ou 4 textfields for dates, 4 or 10 textfields for plenty of different things to display and enter, you have to click on each to see if it the good one…
What is EdtFldDateForSomething ? And what is EdtFldDateForSomethingElse ? or EdtFldDateForOtherThing ?=> all are displayed the same way. So a direct click on a control is finally the best (fastest) way to select a control.

11

You could switch how you build the names. So Instead of ‘EdtFldDateForSomething’ use ‘DateForSomethingEdtFld’. Naming things this way would also mean that related fields eg: ‘DateForSomethingLabel’ & ‘DateForSomethingEdtFld’ would be next to each other in the Navigator which can be useful.

12

I also find this to be super-annoying. It doesn’t happen in other graphics editing software like Draw programs, just in Xojo. It happens so frequently that I’m almost afraid to click on a control. No matter how hard I try to keep the mouse motionless, the control still ends up moving. We shouldn’t need workarounds for something like this.

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13

The sliding click is as old as Realbasic and is super annoying. With a mouse or trackpad it’s not too bad. But with my Wacom tablet this happens ALL THE TIME. And it happens only in Xojo.

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