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Selection Behavior

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I'm absolutely certain that something like this has happened to you. I was putting together some quick and dirty play lists in iTunes based on a random shuffle smart playlist I'd created (basically, a random list of 100 songs that I hadn't listed to in more than two weeks). I'd start on a song, and use <shift>-<up-arrow> to extend the selection to include the songs I want in the playlist.

From time to time, however, I'd go one song too far, and switch to <shift>-<down-arrow> to back off that one song. Only iTunes interprets that action to extend the selection at the song where I started.

I call this "unanchored" selection behavior. In this behavior, <shift> plus any cursor movement always extends the selection regardless of how or where you started selecting using the cursor keys.

And I hate it. I much prefer anchored selections. With an anchored selection, the item or location that was selected when you began extending the selection using a <shift>-<cursor-key> combination is pinned, and never moves. Only the "end" of the selection that you moved using the cursor keys moves.

Note that TextEdit uses anchored selections, as do most other text editors (though not MarsEdit, much to my chagrin). It would seem, though, that the data browser control doesn't "out of the box" as it were. This is really an annoying inconsistency.

So, consider this my personal plea to all software developers (including folks at Apple), please give us anchored selections. Not only would this make all of our applications more consistent, it also gives us fat-fingered users a way to correct our error when we've gone one character, or word or list item, too far.

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Passion, Grace, And Fire (Version I) by Al DiMeola

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2005
    Feel free to have that fixed in Entourage, too! ;-)

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2005
    Oh, the Entourage folks know my opinion on this matter.

    Unfortunately, the default behavior for the data browser control is the unanchored selection, and implementing anchored selection in the data browser control is downright hard.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2005
    Betalogue

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2005
    This used to bug me to no end in some old apps. For me, MarsEdit usually does anchored selection, but the behavior is a tad buggy.

    If you want to see downright broken, check out the Finder's icon view. It pretends like it wants to do anchored selection, but it doesn't ever deselect anything!

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
    PingBack from http://music.247blogging.info/?p=3325

  • Anonymous
    May 23, 2008
    I'm absolutely certain that something like this has happened to you. I was putting together some quick and dirty play lists in iTunes based on a random shuffle smart playlist I'd created (basically, a random list of 100 songs that I hadn't listed to i