Issue 440 in rietveld: Arrow scroll has disconcerting jump

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Status: New
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium

New issue 440 by er...@chromium.org: Arrow scroll has disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Enter a multi-line comment.
2. Use the down-arrow to scroll the blue line past the commment.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

The line [and therefore the whole page] jumps when it hits the comment.
Normal arrow-based scrolling on a web page always moves the page by the
same amount.


What browser are you using? What version? On what operating system?
Version 27.0.1453.47 beta on Debian Wheezy.

At what URL are you accessing Rietveld? codereview.chromium.org

*** If you are a Google employee please say so or mail rietveld-admins@
directly. ***

Yep, I'm at Google. Same guy who logged 382, 398, 439. Apparently I'm
your only arrow-key user ;'>.

Please provide any additional information below.

This is yet more fallout from issue 382. Any chance you could just drop
the whole misfeature? Did anybody actually request this functionality?

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[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #1 on issue 440 by er...@chromium.org: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

Just hit this today, and even worse: when you have a whole series of
comment-and-reply-comment stuff together, this skips over it completely.
If it's longer than a page, that means there's no way to scroll through it
via arrow keys. Very annoying.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Updates:
Labels: Component-UI Usability

Comment #2 on issue 440 by tech...@gmail.com: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

I was against this arrow feature too. I believe the Guido is the main
proponent. Probably because he knows how it should work. I don't. If
somebody can show me a video of how it should behave, I can think about how
to deal with that.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Updates:
Labels: -Priority-Medium Priority-Low

Comment #3 on issue 440 by gvanr...@gmail.com: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

I don't know if I'm the only proponent. IIRC Mondrian at Google worked the
same way and over the 6 years it was in use I don't recall getting
significant complaints.

I can imagine there might be a way to fix it, but I'm no JavaScript wizard,
so I don't know. The *import* UI feature that this enables, BTW, is
complete keyboard-driven entering of review comments -- just hit down until
the blue line is at the line where you want to enter a comment, hit Enter
to open a new comment dialog, type away, and hit control-Enter to save.

If you can implement a way to preserve this UI feature while making the
scrolling smoother, I'm all for it, but so far this bug is just whining.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #4 on issue 440 by tech...@gmail.com: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

1. Does Mondrian also jump above/after the comments?
2. Does the position of line on screen surface is always constant in
Mondrian screen during scrolling?

The main showstopper for any further JavaScript fixes is that all code is
made with custom JavaScript - no jQuery or any other advanced tools makes
this work really unpleasant.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #5 on issue 440 by albrecht.andi: Arrow scroll has disconcerting
jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

I voted for this issue too and implemented it. And for sure we can work on
sorting the issues out. Eventually it's just the easiest solution to add an
option to the user settings to enable/disable this feature in the UI since
not all users seem to feel comfortable with it.

techtonik, the JavaScript code is pretty well organized, understandable and
stable for years now. I really don't understand why you call it a
showstopper just because it doesn't use a library.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #6 on issue 440 by er...@chromium.org: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

Guido:

I don't know if Mondrian worked the same way. I haven't used Mondrian in
years, but I don't recall them breaking scrolling.

I just tried the current internal tool, and it does override arrows for
scrolling. However, it doesn't have the other bugs that make this
implementation of the feature so annoying: resetting the arrow-scroll
position to the top of the page after every comment and failing to warp the
scroll-position into view when you hit an arrow key. Perhaps that's why
you don't recall getting bug reports?

I do see the value of the feature, now that you've explained it, although I
don't know if I'll use it. I do like to drive entirely by keyboard when I
can, which is ironically why this change messes with my workflow so much.
I just drive my keyboard differently than you drive yours, I guess.

Andi:

Thanks for your response. I'm loathe to suggest that you add a setting; so
few users actually use them that they're often a waste of dev time. Is
there any reason that it has to override the arrow keys? They've already
got a well-known function, and if you'd chosen e.g. ',' and '.' for your
new comment-skipping-slow-scroll-from-the-top instead of the standard
scroll keys, I'd never even have noticed the problems.

Alternatively, if you make the scroll position warp into view whenever an
arrow key is hit [just like you do for 'n' and 'p', and like the internal
review tool does] and make it stop on each line of a comment instead of
skipping over them, it'll at least be good enough that I'll stop logging
bugs for a while ;'>.

But I still think the cleaner solution is to stop breaking built-in
keyboard shortcuts. You picked new ones for 'p' and 'n', rather than use
the arrows there, and this is analogous. Your arrow keys currently jump
oddly, scroll at the wrong speed [compared to that on other web pages],
sometimes mysteriously fail to work [when the cursor's off-screen]...it's
really off-putting. But as I said, I'll take a partial solution if that'll
make other users happy.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #7 on issue 440 by tech...@gmail.com: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

Andi, there is nothing wrong existing code. It is maintainable and works,
but modification takes more time than it is currently acceptable for JS
projects. There are now more advanced methods of DOM query thanks to jQuery
selectors. Effects and transition easily made by UI libraries. Libraries
like AngularJS even allow to do complex UI logic in declarative manner.
There are also ways to define namespaces for JavaScript functionality and
make it modular and pluggable. There is also CoffeeScript which makes JS
syntax less verbose.

I'd also implement an option (turned off by default) until the cursor
follows scrolled position, not the other way around like it is now. But I
will not have time to implement that myself in plain JavaScript.

[riet...@googlecode.com]

Comment #8 on issue 440 by masperm...@gmail.com: Arrow scroll has
disconcerting jump
https://code.google.com/p/rietveld/issues/detail?id=440

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