Item10593: Ajax interface: focus and save policy

The current behavior regarding input focus and saving of cells can easily cause data loss and is inconvenient for keyboard editing.

Problem #1

• when editing a cell and moving pointer focus to a different program or browser tab (at least in chromium browser), all changes to the cell are discarded without warning; this is an unexpected behavior to me as it causes data loss and prevents me from copy-pasting data from other applications while being in cell edit mode

Solution

• stay in edit mode even when focus is lost

Problem #2

• edited data may get lost since the edit mode is quit too easily, e.g. by clicking elsewhere on the page (e.g. just not aiming correctly at the "save" button) or by hitting "TAB" key (which shortly moves the input focus to the "save" button but then exits edit mode without saving

Solutions

• when a field's data was changed and we don't save it, a confirmation dialog should pop up
• how about defaulting to "save" when clicking elsewhere and having a "cancel" button instead of "save"?
• "TAB" key behavior: defaulting to "save this field, proceed to the next and go into edit mode" would be best in my eyes, making keyboard-only editing easier

-- PhilippLeufke - 04 Apr 2011

All good points. Confirmed. Anyone want to have a go. please go ahead.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 04 Apr 2011

Problem #3

• Pressing "Enter" while in "add row" mode discards the contents of the input boxes and adds an empty row.

-- GeorgeClark - 21 Aug 2014

Commenting is disabled while not logged in