Recently dropdown boxes in the properties panel broke and let you type in the box when double clicked. The panel should open when clicked, typing in a dropdown is bad UX. This might be related to new attributes button, I have them enabled. I am on studio v0.462.0.416719 on Windows 10
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Hi, this is an intentional feature meant to allow searching through longer enum dropdowns like Font and Material easier. If you want to access the dropdown, then you can click the arrow button (the old type-to-jump is also available behind the open dropdown). Otherwise, you can type a partial value in the textbox and press enter.
We are willing to explore other options if more developers find this frustrating than helpful.
As a side note, this is unrelated to attributes. It is a standalone feature.
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Oh that is useful for longer lists yes but now 95% of the space is dedicated to an action I rarely want to do. Making it so when you click the button it opens the panel, then clicking again while the panel is open allows you to search would be better UX
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Is it possible to open the dropdown as well as focus the textbox at the same time? The dropdown arrow is a very small target for what is a very commonly desired operation in the properties widget.
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No, we do not have specific control over the UI as this dropdown is a Qt combobox. Our options are:
- Old behavior
- New behavior
- Completely replace the enum dropdown with custom UI (e.g. replace material with a palette popup like BrickColor and Font with something like the script editor font setting)
We want to do #3 long-term regardless, so the textbox behavior is ultimately a question of short term benefit. Either developers find it useful or they do not. Depending on the answer, we can switch back to the old behavior.
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Return to old behavior, it wasn’t too difficult to find items on longer lists before since you can just type the first letter and it would move the list to that position
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I personally also prefer the old behavior, if I needed something specific I would just press the first letter on my keyboard and most of the time that would scroll it immediately into view. Currently there are few Enums that show up in the properties widget with so many members that this is not sufficient.
Looking forward to #3 though, that sounds cool.
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While I’d love the third behavior, this current behavior is not suitable for in-studio development. I would like to return back to the old behavior.
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Definitely prefer the old behavior. Click to open dropdown & then allow typing to search if desired.
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An artist on our team was very upset thismorning over this change as it slows down his workflow. I opened up studio and found the same issue present.
I don’t think this benefits most developers and should be replaced with a different method of searching (such as @sleitnick 's suggestion)
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This would instantly be fixed if the dropdown was still automatic. That extra click just slows you down.
This new feature would be fine if the typing had some auto completion, or showed a list of terms based on your input underneath the textbox
We have switched back to the old behavior.
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See comments for staff provided update & solution 