sabrogden
[Feature Request] GUI Toolbar
Hello,
Would it be possible to add a toolbar at the top of the GUI? I think a clipboard manager should be intuitive and simple to use, and for that, it would be very helpful if users could pin their most frequently used options as icons on a toolbar.
In Ditto, all available options rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts. For users who work with many different types of software, having to memorize so many shortcuts can be overwhelming. Although these options do exist in the context menu, having to locate and click them from the list every time is very inconvenient.
For example, if I want to reorder an entity in the list without using shortcuts, I currently have to open the right-click menu again and again for every single step of moving it up or down. This makes the feature nearly unusable. Instead, it should be possible to reorder entities directly via drag-and-drop in the list, or through toolbar icons like “Move Up” and “Move Down.” The same applies to group management: reordering group lists and hierarchies, adding an entity to a group, or moving an entity between groups should all be intuitive operations.
Furthermore, certain options like Never Auto Delete and Auto Delete cannot even be assigned to shortcuts, meaning they can only be accessed through the right-click context menu.
I truly look forward to a version of Ditto that can always be used intuitively at a glance. Thank you very much for all your hard work!
Ability to reorder items (or selection of items) with a mouse drag-and-drop would be very usefull indeed. Instead of several reordering commands (hidden in sub-menus) it will speed up managment a lot.
Reordering via drag-and-drop is my #1 wishlist item for Ditto. I don't know the cause, but some of my items will jump up 3, 5, 10 or more places in the order when I try to move them up 1. This happens using the "Move Up" in the menu and the control-up-arrow shortcut.
I try to keep my proofreading comments organized by topic, and when I add a new one and try to get it into a particular place on the list (near, for example, other grammar issues), this odd behavior makes it frustrating. I sometimes have to give up and leave it "close enough" instead of where I actually want it.
@QPhysics137 wrote:
Reordering via drag-and-drop is my #1 wishlist item for Ditto. I don't know the cause, but some of my items will jump up 3, 5, 10 or more places in the order when I try to move them up 1. This happens using the "Move Up" in the menu and the control-up-arrow shortcut.
This is tracked in ticket #1007.
License
This comment and any other from myself on this ticket is offered under the terms of CC0 1.0.
@trpld wrote:
For users who work with many different types of software, having to memorize so many shortcuts can be overwhelming. Although these options do exist in the context menu, having to locate and click them from the list every time is very inconvenient.
Toolbars also require users to locate and select the right button.
For example, if I want to reorder an entity in the list without using shortcuts, I currently have to open the right-click menu again and again for every single step of moving it up or down. This makes the feature nearly unusable.
Technically, no. You could create custom shortcuts. You could also move it first or last using the corresponding actions. Or you could select all the entries between the current and desired location and move those up or down. Or you could open the context menu with the Menu key.
You are right that this is one case where a button in the toolbar would help a lot, but moving elsewhere than at the start or end is a rare need, and there are more efficient solutions (drag-and-drop indeed, or cutting and pasting entries).
The same applies to group management: reordering group lists and hierarchies, adding an entity to a group, or moving an entity between groups should all be intuitive operations.
I do not see what is unintuitive about the latter. And occasional operations like modifying group hierarchy can use a dedicated interface, just like Firefox's bookmark manager.
Furthermore, certain options like Never Auto Delete and Auto Delete cannot even be assigned to shortcuts, meaning they can only be accessed through the right-click context menu.
In fact, these can be controlled via the Properties dialog.
In general, my first reaction to your request was positive, since I found CopyQ's main window less intimidating to familiarize with. But the flipside is that CopyQ has 2 interfaces, one which is a little bulky, and one which is much more limited than Ditto. That must also increase the maintenance burden.
Looking at CopyQ's main window is also telling when you consider that the toolbar (to the right by default) contains 2 icons twice (the tag icon and the note icon). This could be easily improved, but it highlights that if a toolbar used the same icon for all its buttons, it would require even more memorization and not be any more intuitive. In fact, at this time none of the functions has any icon, so they would have to use labels, which would take a lot of space.
What we can easily agree on is that the interface can easily be improved, and the contextual menu in particular should be easier to navigate. I feel adding icons would be the lowest-hanging fruit, and the menu hierarchy can also be optimized and streamlined quite a bit, sometimes simply by clarifying labels. I feel we should probably revisit the relevance of this request once the menu is less heavy and cluttered, and more polished.
This is an ITS, so tickets should be issue-oriented. I recommend you file a ticket specifically about clip reordering.
As for the general request you are making, it is unclear what you ask for precisely. Are you asking to move the existing toolbar to the top? Or are you asking for a new toolbar? And if the latter, why? I would not disagree with moving both the toolbar and the caption bar to the top, which would make Ditto closer to CopyQ and allow merging them in a single bar.
Are you asking for a toolbar which only consists of custom (pinned) buttons?
If you still feel solving this involves changes to toolbars, I suggest filing 1 or 2 and less diffuse tickets to clarify. Note that a toolbar always belongs to a GUI.