Hi Assaf,

I'm not sure when a standard listbox is converted into a custom listbox - it seems to be arbitrary (or based on some hidden criteria).

Conversion occurs when there are more than 20 options for a select; anecdotally, this is when the list starts to become difficult to use.

With some tools, the list boxes are replaced at run time, with others - not at all. Is there any way to turn this thing off ? force a parameter in my XML file never to be converted to this custom list box ?

No way to turn it off right now -- do you want a way to turn it off? Ideally, the box should behave like a normal select with additional search capabilities, so there shouldn't be a need to turn it off.

The custom listboxes have "wrap-around" mis-feature - when the last item is selected and the user presses "down" or "page-down" - the selection jumps to the first item (and vice versa). Also, On firefox 3 (linux), holding the arrow key (up or down) does not move the selection. one needs to press multiple times. On Chrom 5 (linux) holding the arrow key does work as expected.

We'll look into these issues.

I assume the list boxes are implemented as HTML, because their content can be selected with the mouse (i.e. marking the text inside the drop-down list box for a 'copy&paste' kind of way).

This wreaks havoc on the GUI, the drop-down stays on screen and hides the rest of the controls. One can open two drop-downs the same time, etc.

In my browsers (Chrome 5, Safari 4, and Firefox 3.5), only one drop-down can be opened at a time on page. As with normal selects, when a custom select's options are open, they hide inputs underneath the options. The one problem I see is that with the custom select, clicking on the element's main area does not toggle the visibility of its options.

When entering a value in the auto-complete editbox, the drop-down list box shows only relevant items. Clicking outside the list closes the drop-down list. clicking on the blue arrow or on the editbox itself again shows the drop-down list, but with all the items (where I would assume it should show only items matching the existing value in the auto-complete edit-box).

Bug. We'll fix.

Pressing the "ENTER" key while a drop-down list is open activates the next button, instead of selecting the item and closing the list.

Fixed in galaxy-central changeset 3876.

One issue happens on the local server, which uses an old revision so you might have fixed those in the meantime. For one tool, the list of input datasets is shown with this new custom list box.

The items are sorted in ascii order, not in human/version/natural order (see attachments 1 & 2). The order is 1,10,11 etc. instead of 1,2,3,4.

The listbox also contains an "unsepcified(?)" item at the bottom (see attachment 3).

Fixed in previous changesets.

Thanks for the keen eyes, J.

Thanks all for your comments (and fixes).

Jeremy Goecks wrote, On 06/05/2010 12:00 PM:

...

With some tools, the list boxes are replaced at run time, with others - not at all. Is there any way to turn this thing off ? force a parameter in my XML file never to be converted to this custom list box ?

No way to turn it off right now -- do you want a way to turn it off? Ideally, the box should behave like a normal select with additional search capabilities, so there shouldn't be a need to turn it off.

Yes, I want a way to turn it off or force it always on.

I agree that it's a cool feature from a technical POV, but I think it's not optimal from a usability POV. Users like (and need) consistency. IMHO it's more important than cool features.

Think about a history with ~30 items, of different types of files. A tool that takes TXT files can handle all the datasets, so the listbox will be replaced with a custom one. Another tool takes only BED files (and let's say there are only 19 datasets of BED in the current history) - it will show the original listbox. If a user re-runs and generates just one more BED dataset, clicking again on the BED tool will show a custom list box. Confusing.

A similar (but worse) things happen in a tool that has a "columns" parameter (example: the "merge columns" tool in "text manipulation"). Select an input dataset that have less than 20 columns - normal listbox is shown. Select a different dataset with more than 20 columns (without reloading the tool) - the listbox is dynamically changed to a custom one. Not good.

Either always turn it on (e.g. for dataset selection), or always turn it off - that's my opinion.

-gordon