Use shortcut icon to indicate a reference entry instead of gray color

spiralofhope commented 1 year ago

Summary

An entry which has a reference to another entry is shaded grey.

Entries which are greyed out signal "bad" to users. For example, this is done for menu or other UI items which are not usable. A list of entries which is mixed-grey can be confusing to users.

I had to hunt through the issues list, then the documentation, then realise that spelling varies and use the other to discover #2901 and get an explanation. This entry shading is not documented in KeePassXC: Getting Started Guide (unless there is a longer document; I was unable to find one referenced in that guide)

Reproduction

Create an entry
Clone that entry, selecting Replace username and password with references
(The new entry is grey)

Recommendation

I suggest removing the grey functionality and adding a new column entry to the list:

Then a user can choose to display an icon to indicate which entries have a reference. Maybe a classic curled shortcut-arrow.

I feel this would simplify and clarify the UI for users who never learned or forgot what greyed entries indicate.

droidmonkey commented 1 year ago

https://keepassxc.org/docs/KeePassXC_UserGuide#_clone_an_entry

We don't mention the color change. We do put "Ref:" in front of the text though and it is a pretty deliberate action by the user to use references so I am having a hard time with the confusion part.

However, I do dislike the graying of the entry text as well.

spiralofhope commented 1 year ago

We do put "Ref:" in front of the text though and it is a pretty deliberate action by the user to use references so I am having a hard time with the confusion part.

A user has to edit the entry then poke around to notice when something is different.

I had to unhide a password to see the Ref:

keepassxreboot / keepassxc