GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 721026
Improve double-click behaviour in account hierarchy
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:22:58 UTC
Double clicking an account with sub-accounts in 2.4.X opened the account, in 2.5.10 double click now expands and collapses said account. This was and can be achieved by clicking the twirl down arrow, so seems unnecessary to map expand/collapse to double click. It can still be opened with right-click open or Open on toolbar but this a touch annoying. Double clicking an account with no sub-accounts opens the account as usual.
Sorry just noticed duplicate bug. Seems this is intended behaviour, which is unfortunate as I have many accounts with sub-accounts, e.g. brokerage parent with child stock accounts. The twirl arrow is next to the account name so seems redundant to map this also to double-click. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 712308 ***
Any reason this couldn't be a preference option?
Most UX designers would reply with "adding an option is not a good option" and I tend to agree. The issue at hand here is a user interface inconsistency. For some accounts it would make more sense to expand its children on double-click, for others it would be better to open the account itself by double-clicking. The differentiator is an account property "placeholder". Placeholder accounts should expand their children, others should be opened. Unfortunately there is no visual indicator in the account tree that differentiates placeholder accounts from other accounts and so you can't apply different behaviour for placeholder vs non-placeholder accounts without confusing a lot of users with seemingly inconsistent behaviour. I agree the situation is suboptimal as it is now. It would help is placeholders would be displayed visually different from the other accounts. So I'll remove the duplicate marker and make this bug report an enhancement request to improve on this. What should happen IMO: - present placeholder accounts visually differently from non-placeholder accounts (for example use italic text on placeholder accounts) - adapt double-click behaviour based on the type of account that is double-clicked * placeholder accounts should expand/hide their children * other accounts should open a register window
*** Bug 721418 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Actually after using the new behaviour for a bit I tend to agree with the various bug reports here: Double-click on an account should open it, period. The problem with the "expanding child" feature is that parent accounts are allowed regardless of whether they are maked as placeholder or not. Oh, would a parent account that is non-placeholder behave differently on double-click? I didn't notice this so far. I think we got the feature wrong and should return to the plain rule "double-click equals opening register", with the placeholder accounts opened as read-only.
(In reply to comment #5) > Actually after using the new behaviour for a bit I tend to agree with the > various bug reports here: Double-click on an account should open it, period. > > The problem with the "expanding child" feature is that parent accounts are > allowed regardless of whether they are maked as placeholder or not. Oh, would a > parent account that is non-placeholder behave differently on double-click? I > didn't notice this so far. This is not how it was implemented, but what I proposed to implement together with some change in the account representation so that it is visible which accounts are placeholders and which ones aren't. > I think we got the feature wrong and should return > to the plain rule "double-click equals opening register", with the placeholder > accounts opened as read-only. I'm afraid I see this differently. I would prefer most-used behaviour to be default. I agree that for all but placeholder accounts that would be "open a register". For a placeholder that's definitely not the case. They are really meant to help structure the other accounts in a clean hierarchy. Their primary action is to expand or collapse. It's comparatively rare to open these accounts (they can but are not intended to hold transactions). For 2.6.1 I have committed a partial fix (r23752) that takes care of the behaviour part already: - placeholder accounts will expand/collapse on double-click. - any other account type will simply open its register IMO that should do the right thing in most cases. Remains to be done: figure out how to represent placeholder accounts so they are easily recognized in the hierarchy as different from ordinary accounts with children.
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