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New Pane Icon Clicking


davesalyer

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I vaguely remember David Lang's post about the functionality of the add pane buttons but not sure whatever came of that. I click and hold on the add text/resource button to choose a tool and add a new pane with that tool - from that point on, if I just click the icon it adds that same tool again - I think Accordance use to default back to the first tool in the list and add that. This new behavior is very annoying. Can I change this somehow? Am I missing something?

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I believe that it has always opened the first item until you choose an item, and then it reopens that each time. Remember that you now have keyboard shortcuts to cycle the module in a pane so it may be easier just to open a pane and then set it with:

Shift-control

1 through 0

or +/-

or up/down arrow.

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Hmmm. Maybe I am imagining things. For some reason my mind assumes this action will always add the top resource as if that is the way it has always worked. Maybe I'm losing my mind. Is there a reason that once you select a resource for the added pane that that resource then becomes the defualt resource for clicking once on the icon? It seems like once you added the pane you wouln't be adding additional panes of the same resource to that tab anyway.

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Dave,

 

It's really a carryover from the behavior of the Resource palette, where it makes more sense. The thinking was that you might amplify to a resource from the palette, close it, and then decide to amplify to that same resource again. So the checkmark gets added to the item you last selected and that's what comes up when you click.

 

With the Add Pane button, I agree it doesn't make much sense, and lately we've been discussing how to improve it. In another thread, I asked if we shouldn't just eliminate the button behavior altogether and just have the pop-up menu open and "stick" with a single click. That would help the new user who may not otherwise realize that button contains a menu.

 

Another possibility would be to have the Add Pane button move the checkmark to the next item in the list after the one you selected. That way, you could click several times to add a series of panes.

 

Anyway, that's a bit of the rationale behind the way we did it before. We're still trying to work out the best way to improve it.

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That makes sense. For me, I have the ESVSB module as the first Reference Tool and I think that is what I am going to get everytime I hit the button. But if I have opened another resource and closed it, I forget about it and then when I want to add the ESVSB I go to click and something else comes up. It makes sense that clicking on the button simply opens up a pane for that type of resource and then you can use the short cuts to move between those resources in that pane, but this does require a number of steps or memorizing the order of the menu. I also see the possible confusion for new users, though programs like Preview have icons which behave like those in Accordance (click to perform action or click and hold to get a drop down menu) so it's not unheard of. There are some resource panes that I use far more frequently than others (ESVSB, ESV Crossrefs, ESV notes for example). I think it would be helpful to have user customizable buttons similar to the bookmarks toolbar on Firefox so that users could assign a reasonable number of buttons to their favorite resources (I know there is a favorites feature in the palette but again, this is a menu that has to be held, searched through, and then clicked on, and it opens a new window instead of a new pane. Preview also has the ability to customize the tool bar by adding or subtracting the icons you want to show. Perhaps this is an option Accordance might look at for windows and the resource palette. I know there are a lot of icons in the resource palette that I rarely use (Diagramming for example, is not something I do so frequently that I need that button taking up screen real-estate). Just some thoughts in response to your earlier post. Thanks for your replies all.

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