App Inventor Blocks editor keyboard shortcuts

[Slobodan Vujnovic]

I could not find an official list of the Blocks editor keyboard shortcuts. The Help menu does not mention any, at least not in the obvious places.

As a keyboard freak, I discovered, by trial and error, that there is a standard Ctrl+F/F3/Shift+F3 search feature, but how many users know about it?

There is no [Find] button available either (for those who use the mouse for everything) , so I guess this feature is still in some beta state, although it works well. However, its practical use is limited to the currently visible blocks. If the search item is somewhere off the screen, its usefulness drops dramatically, as you have to drag around the view and examine pixels, instead of being taken to the target by the editor.

Another undocumented discovery: Ctrl+G also brings up the "find bar", just like Ctrl+F. In some editors, Ctrl+G is used for the Find&Replace dialog, but in AI it is equivalent to Ctrl+F. Maybe a Find&Replace is in the works?

Is there a list of official keyboard shortcuts, and maybe planned editing features available?

Also, it would be helpful to put a [Find] button on the toolbar for easier discovery of this feature, provided it is officially supported.

[Hal Abelson]

I''ve added FIND as an issue to look at, but we're doing some other screen navigation work that would have to happen first.

Find and replace is more delicate, and I'm hesitant to take that on.  It's not only a matter of replacing character strings, but more of consistent renaming of components and variables.
App Inventor already does that kind of replacing and I'm not sure about combining it with a find operation.   Note that a single renaming already renames all occurrences of the item.

[Slobodan Vujnovic]

Hal, thanks for responding!

I forgot that AI has a great global replace (refactoring?) feature that I, in fact, use all the time! It solves the problem for components and variables pefectly. As for user strings, I now also think that it may be risky to allow the users to replace them globally. Text strings should be stored in lists and variables (or the DB), for easy renaming/localization, and hard-coded inside blocks as little as possible. If kept in one area of the Blocks, it shouldn't be a problem for the user to locate and manage them.

As for the Ctrl+F/F3/Shift+F3, I did a lot of testing. F3/Shift+F3 do jump from hit to hit. However, sometimes the whole content would move, sometimes not, to show the hit. Very often, the blocks would be gone and just white space shown; hitting more F3's would finally show some blocks. All in all, very unpredictable and frustrating.