Navigating the File List

[Andrew Heard]

Some more unexpected behaviour -

I have just discovered the file list panel, and I like it. However, keyboard navigation is a bit screwy:

if you type the first letter or two of the file you want to find, the first file matching those letters is duly found and highlighted. Great. Now I want to down-key to my filename. But it jumps either to the top of the list (if no file in the list has previously been selected) or to the last file selected.

Example 1

1 Type a G to search for a file starting with G
2 The first G file is highlighted.
3 Down-arrow to try to get to the G-file you want.
4 The file list jumps back up to the top.

Example 2

1 Type a G to search for a file starting with G
2 The first G file is highlighted.
3 Click the highlighted file.
4 Down-arrow to get to the G-file you want.
5 Success!
6 Now type T to find a file starting with T.
7 Type a G to search for a file starting with G
8 The first T file is highlighted.
9 Down-arrow to try to get to the T-file you want.
10 The file list jumps back to the G-file you last clicked.

Am I doing something wrong or being too picky?

[ChoccieMuffin]

Wow, I didn't know you could do that! I hadn't even discovered File List, being used to using Content Explorer for that kind of thing, and it works as you would imagine in Content Explorer.

I tried it, and got the same behaviour. I suspect that is what it's intended to do, so I think you'll just have to put in that extra mouse-click to select the file that has been highlighted. If you think about it, it is logical, so just as you might have your cursor in the middle of a Word document, you can scroll up and down to look at other parts of the file, but the cursor stays where you left it, so unless you actively move the cursor to the new position, when you start typing, stuff is inserted where the cursor is.

I did find the Content Explorer behaved as you wanted, so would that be an option?

[RamonS]

It could be that the list attempts to capture more than one key entry, but does not reset the buffer correctly when making a selection. For example, If you have two files called "topac" and "topic" entering "top" will jump to "topac", continuing typing an "e" will remain at that position, pressing backspace and typing and "i" probably will then jump to "topic".
The list should clear the entry buffer on a mouse click on a list item and also make the item found as closest match to be the current selection in the list index.
No matter what, this is a bug and things like that are typically standard procedure in unit testing. No idea how that slipped through test plan reviews and testing itself. Please report it, should take the developers about 10 minutes to fix.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Oh no, Ramon, you've got the wrong end of the stick completely - it's not a bug it's a feature!