Hi,
recently I got notice about our (from my point of view) very
user-unfriendly way for editing Input Fields in Writer.
Currently, you can not place the cursor into an Input Field which in
general is shown with a grey background when Menu View - Field Shading
is on. If you click on the Input Field, a modal dialog pops up. In this
dialog you can edit the Input Field's content. On confirmation of the
dialog the Input Field's content is changed in the text document. To
edit the next Input Field you need to click on it. There is also a
special key shortcut - namely Shift-Ctrl-F9. This key shortcut opens the
Input Field content editing dialog for the first field. This time the
dialog has a Next button by which you can confirm your change and switch
directly to the next Input Field. A Previous button is not available. By
Murphys law the dialog hides most of the time the Input Field in the
text document.
I have got the opinion that such an editing experience is bad,
especially, if the document is a form which makes use of a lot of Input
Fields to be filled by the user.
My idea is to be able to edit the Input Fields directly in the text
document's content together with some special handling. The special
handling which I had in mind is:
- Some special key handling to "travel" from Input Field to Input Field,
forward and backward. May be key Ctrl-Tab for forward movement and
Shift-Ctrl-Tab for backward movement.
- Feedback when the user "enters" (cursor inside Input Field) and
"leaves" (cursor outside Input Field) a Input Field. May be some
transparent overlay, similar to the selection overlay, when the cursor
is inside a Input Field.
- Even if the document is read-only, the editing of the Input Fields
should be possible when configured correspondingly.
What is your opinion about the current Input Field editing?
What is your feedback on my idea to improve the editing of Input Fields?
If I found time, I would like to implement such an improvement.
Unfortunately, I do not have the resources, now.
Everybody volunteering to help/to provide feedback on development, qa,
user experience, documentation, translation of possible new UI and the
new documentation is welcome.
Best regards, Oliver.
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