Different behavior of select tag in the tool configuration file when the number of options is different.
Hi,
I have a 'select' tag in a tool's XML file, I would like to have a default option, which is choosing nothing. So the drop down menu of the web interface will be empty and when a user clicks the drop down menu, the list contains an empty entry with other options. So I basically have an option tag like the following <option value=""></option> together with other options. This works fine when I have up to 19 options including the default options. A user can submit the job without selecting any options and the program will use the default option. However, when the number of options exceeds 20, then drop down menu of the web interface displays "Click to Select or Search" instead of empty. And the user has to select one of the options in order to submit the job, otherwise, a question mark is displayed in the drop down menu and then an error message shows up under the drop down menu with the message "An invalid option was selected, please verify". Why the behavior changed when there are 20 options or more for a drop down menu?
Thanks, Luobin
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Luobin Yang yangluob@isu.edu wrote:
Hi,
I have a 'select' tag in a tool's XML file, ... when the number of options exceeds 20, then drop down menu of the web interface displays "Click to Select or Search" ... Why the behavior changed when there are 20 options or more for a drop down menu?
Thanks, Luobin
The drop down list becomes very hard to use with lots of entries (for example we have lots of local BLAST databases offered to the user), and in that situation the search works really well.
So for most cases, the search system is much more user friendly.
You have a special case wanting a blank entry in the list, there may be a better way to handle that. One idea might be to use a caption like <DEFAULT> instead of an empty string?
Peter
I have a patch to replace the searchable select implementation with select2 which seems to work well, but still needs comprehensive testing. I think it may address this problem. If anyone is interested in trying it:
https://bitbucket.org/james_taylor/james-galaxy-central-patches/src/b70fa480...
-- James Taylor, Assistant Professor, Biology/CS, Emory University
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 4:45 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Luobin Yang yangluob@isu.edu wrote:
Hi,
I have a 'select' tag in a tool's XML file, ... when the number of options exceeds 20, then drop down menu of the web interface displays "Click to Select or Search" ... Why the behavior changed when there are 20 options or more for a drop down menu?
Thanks, Luobin
The drop down list becomes very hard to use with lots of entries (for example we have lots of local BLAST databases offered to the user), and in that situation the search works really well.
So for most cases, the search system is much more user friendly.
You have a special case wanting a blank entry in the list, there may be a better way to handle that. One idea might be to use a caption like <DEFAULT> instead of an empty string?
Peter ___________________________________________________________ Please keep all replies on the list by using "reply all" in your mail client. To manage your subscriptions to this and other Galaxy lists, please use the interface at:
galaxy-dev@lists.galaxyproject.org
-
James Taylor -
Luobin Yang -
Peter Cock