Jul 16 2009
[UX] CTRL+SHIFT Non-Contiguous List Selections
To improve end-user experience, I would think that multiple non-contiguous selections in lists should be made possible by left-clicking while pressing down CTRL+SHIFT (ie, holding down both modifier keys while clicking).
Aspire UI uiListBox
The following shows how the uiListBox in the Aspire UI library (and the old GhostWire ListBox) behaves:
(1) Click (select) the first item in the list, selection is (1).
(2) Press down SHIFT key and click the third item, selection is first to third item (1,2,3).
(3) Release SHIFT key. Press down CTRL key and click the sixth item, non-contiguous selections result (1,2,3+6).
**(4) Press down both CTRL and SHIFT keys and click the seventh item – non-contiguous selections result (1,2,3+6,7).**
Flex List
The following shows how the List in Flex behaves:
(1) to (3) as above.
**(4) Press down both CTRL and SHIFT keys and click the seventh item – only sixth and seventh items are selected, ie non-contiguous selections are lost leaving single block of selection (6,7).**
(With Spark List, contiguous 1-7 selection will result – still not implementing CTRL+SHIFT selections.)
The lack of support for CTRL+SHIFT selections in the Adobe’s List control (from both Flex and Flash IDE) could potentially be an oversight, but since the behavior has remained unchanged through the different iterations of (official) Flash components, over all these years, way back to the old Macromedia days, presumably Adobe doesn’t recognize this as a bug but rather than as an intended behavior.
However, from an end-usability perspective, since CTRL+SHIFT non-contiguous list selections are generally allowed in desktop applications for lists where multiple selections are allowed, not implementing the same in Flash applications can confuse end-users.
Aspire UI Components
Aspire UI is a library of Actionscript 3.0 (AS3) classes for building flexible and lightweight UI elements in Adobe Flash applications. Key features of the components include easy skinning using PNG image files, automatic tab focus ordering, CSS text styles, and layout management. This is a pure AS3 library with no dependency on the Flex framework. You may experiment with the various features by downloading a trial version.
