Arvados

Reviewing d3cb946

The checkbox behavior is a little strange if there are two files in a collection.

1. The first file I click on is selected as I would expect it.
2. For the second file I click on, the selection is suppressed.
3. When I click on the first file to de-select it, the second file becomes selected without any explicit interaction on my part.

The behavior gets even stranger when there are three files:

1. The first file can be selected
2. The second file cannot be selected
3. When I click on the third file, the second file is selected.
4. If I click on the first file to de-select it, the third file is selected and the second file remains selected, giving the impression that multiple files will be selected, but I think only the last one clicked on is actually selected).

The behavior should be much simpler: if I click on a file, that file is selected, and any other files should be de-selected. ("radio button" behavior). Even better would be to get rid of the checkboxes entirely and allow the user to click anywhere on the file list item to select it, the same way that the left hand collection chooser panel works.

Another suggestion: filter out empty collections, since they don't have any files to show anyway.

Peter Amstutz wrote:

Even better would be to get rid of the checkboxes entirely and allow the user to click anywhere on the file list item to select it, the same way that the left hand collection chooser panel works.

+1, I think this is the only reasonable way to go. Click anywhere in row = select = highlight = deselect-all-others. Aside from being small, checkboxes are a pretty strong misleading clue that you can select more than one.

This might mean it's time to make a separate view for "preview/select files in the chooser", rather than overloading the "show collection in full page mode" view. Many of the features in the full page view (checkboxes, view/download buttons) seem to be a distraction/hindrance here anyway...

(I suspect it would be good to change the highlighting color for the collection being previewed when in file-choosing mode, or something like that, but I think we should leave that as is for now and let users/TomO tell us [how] to fix it.)

• Updated to allow selection of the row, instead of the checkbox.

• I did not introduce a new partial. The update needed to allow "preview row selection" was small in size and hence I preferred to stick with updating the current partial.

• I did not "suppress" display of search and download icons for the preview rows. I can mouse over the row and right click to open the search view of a file in a separate tab, which users might find useful. However, I can hide them if this is what we really want in the chooser dialog.

There is a script tag in show_files that seems relevant:

<script>
// The "each" loop in select_all_files() and unselect_all_files()
// is needed because .trigger("change") does not play well with clippy.
// Once clippy has been retired, we should be able to compress this
// into .filter(":visible").prop("checked", true).trigger("change").
...
</script>

Also (as we discussed) the files have some unnecessary left margin or padding (possibly due to the hidden checkboxes?).

• Peter, thanks for the review feedback. I updated to use left padding of 0 when preview panel is used for selection, and merged into master.

• As for the script tag with select_all_files() and unselect_all_files(), I created a new ticket #4525 to address this.