[JENKINS-9597] Autocomplete box in text boxes is not selectable using the enter key

timja commented 13 years ago

Jenkins closes/saves the project configuration if the user presses RETURN in a text field. If the text field has a Jenkins provided auto-completion (or an auto-completion of a browsers like Firefox) then Jenkins also saves the configuration upon selecting a value in the auto-completion list. This is irritating since the user does not expect that a dialog will be closed due to a selection in a list. Either provide a new shortcut to close/save a dialog (as it is done in Jira using ALT-S) or provide a special handling for ENTER if there is a auto-completion in progress.

Old Issue description:

Under the build triggers block in the job configuration if you check off "Build after other projects are built" and start typing a project name, the auto complete box that offers possible suggestions for jobs you want to set as triggers does not respond to the enter key.

For example I type test, it tells me available jobs are test-1 and test-2, I use the arrow key to scroll down to test-1 and press enter it will save and exit the configuration rather than select test-1 because the enter key is still tied to the save button.

*Also I believe that Projects names is a grammatical error, and should instead be Project names.

Originally reported by oseparovic, imported from: Autocomplete box in text boxes is not selectable using the enter key

status: Reopened
priority: Trivial
resolution: Unresolved
imported: 2022/01/10

timja commented 13 years ago

drew:

This is probably not a bug – I confirmed the described behavior in Firefox 3.6.12 and 5.0, but I would guess that it is intentional.

The Enter key in the "Configure Job" webform will trigger a form submit, and will result in any changes being saved (unless you are in a Textarea field such as Description). This is nice because you won't need to scroll or tab all the way down to the Save button to make a quick change to a job.

The behavior you want can be accomplished by using the Tab key. Just start typing to get some suggestions from the YUI Autocomplete mechanism, then use the arrows to select one, then tab to move to the next field without saving.

timja commented 13 years ago

drew:

This is probably not a bug – I confirmed the described behavior in Firefox 3.6.12 and 5.0, but I would guess that it is intentional.

The Enter key in the "Configure Job" webform will trigger a form submit, and will result in any changes being saved (unless you are in a Textarea field such as Description). This is nice because you won't need to scroll or tab all the way down to the Save button to make a quick change to a job.

The behavior you want can be accomplished by using the Tab key. Just start typing to get some suggestions from the YUI Autocomplete mechanism, then use the arrows to select one, then tab to move to the next field without saving.

timja commented 12 years ago

simonhall:

To me, this does actually seem like a bug - I keep on hitting this problem because it is so natural for me to hit Enter when choosing from a drop-down. For me, 'Enter' is not the best hotkey for saving. Of course many users are probably attached to that function now so what I'd suggest is that 'Enter' does not mean 'Save' if you are in the YUI Autocomplete mechanism. I can't imagine that would affect any users negatively.

(I'm afraid I don't know what next step to take with this issue).

timja commented 12 years ago

drulli:

Reopening since this actually is a bug (or at least leads to a bad user experience). We should not change common UI patterns in Jenkins. If we need a shortcut to finish a screen then we should define a new one instead of reusing an existing key that has a different semantic.

timja commented 12 years ago

a2b_emil_ljungdahl:

Another annoyed user, happens just about every time I login to Jenkins and every 3rd time I start a build with parameters

In my opinion the enter key is quite alright (and common) to use as a hotkey for submitting a form, however NOT while you are in "autocompletion mode". For jquery I have been using a nice plugin called SafeEnter (http://plugins.jquery.com/project/SafeEnter) which basically disables the Enter event if your previous keystroke was up,down,pgup or pgdown.

The protection from a method like SafeEnter will not be 100%, but so far it has worked very well where I have implemented it.

timja commented 12 years ago

ari_hyttinen:

I just ended up disabling autocompletion on a textbox in a build step config.jelly, after having just implemented it, because I accidentally saved the job twice during testing. Considering how the job would usually not be fully configured at that point (especially since my textbox uses autoCompleteDelimChar), and considering the worst case side effects of submitting badly configured job (in my case on the level of "annoying to other people"), I find the behavior unacceptable for the end users.

Any javascript/jelly gurus who could provide a workaround piece of javascript? It would be nice, if this could be fixed in the plugin itself, for fields where it is important that reflexive enter press does not save the form? Also, having that workaround code would probably be a good first step on getting Jenkins itself "fixed", whatever that would mean in this case.

timja commented 11 years ago

kullfar:

+1.... very annoying behaviour on login page...
I hate this form!
PLEASE change Enter handling when selecting smth from autocomplete suggest