#75 Gamelist navigation buttons

[Drew Ferguson]

1. on the database game list should the navigation icons not be the same as the green buttons above the board in Board display which also allow navigation of the gamelist on the board display. Especially as there is only up & down motion (which then matches the buttons)

2. on the database game list the "square" button labeled "Go to the current selection" does not seem to do anything

3. on the board display, the toggle "switch to database view/switch to game list view" does not seem to do anything

Perhaps these are not complete yet.

[Gregor Cramer]

1. I don't think so. The arrow buttons beneath the game list on the database tab are navigating the view of the game list. The green arrow buttons above the board are navigating through the games in the game list. But I think about to move the green arrow buttons near the board to the game editor, this might be more logical.

2. It works for me. If you double-click a game, and then you scroll the highlighted (selected) row out of the view, the square button will bring back the selection. This button is changing the view of the list, and does not depend on the content of the game editor. Changing the view to see the loaded game in game editor is not (yet) implemented (but you can see the game number if you press the middle mouse button on the header of the game editor).

3. This button works, but still has issues. This button is changing the meaning of the navigation buttons - otherwise I have to use another set of arrow buttons. Switch to the player list, and select one of the games of a specific player. Now you have the view of this game list on the board tab, this means, the arrow buttons will navigate through the games of this game list - the buttons now are bound to this game list on the player tab. You can change the meaning of the arrow buttons back to the game list on the database tab. Another click on "switch to game list view" will switch back to the game list on the player tab. But I've recognized that sometimes the states (enabled/disabled) of the green arrow buttons are not ok, I have to test this further.

[Drew Ferguson]

1. The reason I suggested changing to the green buttons was because they basically do the same thing - navigate game lists. With a logic of things which look the same should do the same thing and conversely things which look different do different things. The idea would be to make the purpose of the game navigation buttons on the board display more obvious.
   At the moment the gamelist buttons look like the movelist buttons
   In addition, for the gamelist navigation the right and left buttons do not correspond to right and left movement nor right & left keys on the keyboard

   a. location of the boards display green buttons
   I think they are grand where they are. The game editor already gets very cluttered when there are several games open. Besides navigation buttons on the game editor would imply navigating either the editor or open games
   Unless you are thinking of extending the button bar across the full width of the window but not much point unless there are toolbar gadgets waiting to fill it

2. OK [RTFM] :)

3. Ah right I see what it is doing now; that is pretty neat!

   Perhaps change the descriptions though referring to the players list and maybe change the icons - a database drum doesn't mean much. a bunch of players is a bit more obvious. Or maybe the two states as: one player & several players. Indicating which player is currently active would be good too in the tool tip and game number for the games list

   I think the toggle button would be better to precede the arrows as it has precedence or something but maybe thats just me.

   It is a really cool gadget though, nice one!

[Gregor Cramer]

1. I will look for a different button set, but I'm not sure that I will change this finally (it is also hard to find good sets, I've already searched many hours in the Internet). Currently the buttons on the database tab are corresponding very well to the slider beneath the game list. IMO the slider is more important than the optional scrollbar, it allows a better scrolling behavior. I agree that they currently do no correspond to the keyboard navigation, and I should additionally show the shotcuts inside the tooltips. I will not use the green arrow icon set, because these buttons are not doing the same thing. Traversing games in a game list is not the same as changing the list view.

2. Great that you like it, in fact this functionality is only a trial, I don't know how good the acceptance of this idea is.
   Changing the icons to player/several players is not flexible enough, the functionality of these buttons applies to all game lists, for example to the game list in the event tab. To give more information about the bound game list is a good idea and will be realized. And I'm thinking about to change the colors of the arrows depending on the toggle, in this way it will be obvious that the meaning of the arrows has changed.

[Drew Ferguson]

1. It took me a while to figure what you were describing but I see now your logic. Personally I find a horiz scroller controlling a vertical list counter intuitive and doubt I will ever use it

2. a big problem with this gadget is that the user is changing games blind not knowing what will appear next; and because of that new users would find it odd, counter-intuitive and might well think it was broken or something

   OTOH I think it is a great tool and am quite gobsmacked that it actually honours a sorted gameslist as well; darn clever there Gregor!

   Did you say in some other bug report or feature request that it would be possible to show a games list and a game board at the same time? Unless this is possible then the green button navigation is almost essential because otherwise the only way to check a game is by jumping between database and board displays and at the moment this is quite an awkward experience requiring multiple mouse clicks (a minimum of 5 I think) in different places. I know you are addressing this; a single click is all it should take to see the next game.

Is there some reason why you don't want to show database and board displays at the same time? Is the current behaviour what chessbase does and I see it is default behaviour for scid now tho old versions of scid always had the gameslist detached I think.