Idea

Clair A avatar image
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Clair A suggested Matthew Gillespie commented

Lock combo box changes when panel scrolling up or down

In Windows, when you scroll up and down, it scrolls up and down:

gif1.gif

No matter if your mouse hovers a combo box on the way.

In FlexSim, when you scroll up and down in the properties, it is supposed to scroll up and down... except if your mouse hovers a combo box on the way.

In the example below, my mouse is initially next to the Break To field. I scroll up, and then it accidentally changes the walk animation, which is of course not what I wanted to do.

gif2.gif

In trainings, we have seen numerous times beginners being trapped by this kind of behaviour. They changed a setting in a combo box without realising, only to encounter a problem they didn't understand later on (ex: changing a task executer's offset behaviour).

If you also think that this is a flaw that should be fixed, please vote for this idea.

combo boxuser experience
gif1.gif (320.0 KiB)
gif2.gif (63.5 KiB)
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Matthew Gillespie avatar image
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Matthew Gillespie commented

This is a standard Windows feature. Here are two examples of scrolling to change a combo box in Windows:

scroll.gif

printers.gif

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Clair A avatar image Clair A commented ·

None of your examples is showing the same steps that I showed in FlexSim.

What I showed in FlexSim is that a panel scroll turns into a combo scroll.

In your first gif, you scroll up and down, you stop, then you hover the combo box, and you scroll up and down to change the settings in the combo box. I'm totally fine with this behaviour.

In your second gif, you hover the combo box, and you scroll up and down to change the settings in the combo box. I'm also totally fine with this behaviour.

If you look carefully at the FlexSim gif that I posted, here is what happens:

  • I scroll to go up in the properties
  • I reach the top of the properties while scrolling, but as my mouse lands on hovering a combo box, the panel scroll turns into a combo box scroll

Maybe the title of my post was not precise enough, I am going to change it to "Lock combo box changes when panel scrolling up or down".

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Phil BoBo avatar image Phil BoBo ♦♦ Clair A commented ·

"Lock combo box changes when panel scrolling up or down".

I don't think you quite understand why these combobox controls work this way. FlexSim uses the Windows API to create combobox controls. It isn't FlexSim source code that causes the combobox to scroll when you scroll the mouse wheel when pointing at a combobox; it is Windows code. All of these examples are irrelevant.

There isn't code that we can wrap an if() statement around in order to "lock combo box changes" at any particular time. The code doing that is embedded in Windows, not FlexSim. You scrolled the mouse wheel while pointing at a panel, the controls moved, the mouse is now pointing at a combobox, so when you keep scrolling the mouse wheel, the combobox scrolls. This is handled by Windows, not FlexSim.

Your Metro-style app examples from Windows settings aren't using the Windows API GUI framework. They're using a new framework (UWP) introduced in Windows 8 for creating fullscreen apps designed for touchscreens instead of desktop applications.

Looking into this deeper, it appears that Microsoft also introduced a command in Windows Vista that can be sent to a combobox control to change how Windows handles mouse and keyboard messages for that control: CB_SETEXTENDEDUI message (Winuser.h) - Win32 apps | Microsoft Docs

I'll add a case to the dev list to consider using this message with comboboxes embedded into scrollable panels.

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Matthew Gillespie avatar image Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ Clair A commented ·

@Clair A The same example using your steps:

keepscrolling.gif

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keepscrolling.gif (205.0 KiB)

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