This has briefly been discussed last year here, but not as a feature request.
I would like to be able to right-click the canvas and "select all nodes below" so that I can more easily make space for an expanded flow. I'm aware that I can zoom all the way out to select once they're all on the one screen, but this is not always possible (esp since 3.1), and it's tiny so very fiddly (see screenshot below which is zoomed out as far as possible).
I seem to spend a lot of time doing a cut/paste of groups and rearranging just because I want to include one more "row" on a flow and there isn't enough space. Perhaps I'm making life harder for myself by wanting to have complete flows in groups and all flows for a room on a single tab, but it makes it a lot easier to find things and read.
I have tried the "start dragging and then use the arrow keys" suggested in the link above, and while it does work, it is a very strange experience. The down arrow key jumps the screen to the next node below, so you can keep pressing down until you get to the bottom, then press right until you get to the bottom-right, then drag more to include all of the required nodes. Then scroll all the way back to the top so you can drag the amount of space you need. It's also not very intuitive.
Can I change your FR to changing the last entry in the dropdown to just Select - with a further dropdown options as I can see different people wanting different options to just selecting below
Yeah that makes sense. Although my suggestion couldn't sensibly be mapped to the keyboard - so that would make it one click further away. But if you're coping with that flow of yours, I'm sure I'll manage.
Hi Cymplecy, why don't you use groups in your complex flow. Then it is not only easy to navigate but also to drag the flow groups around on your screen.
If you used groups as @PdeJ suggests, groups within groups and suitable background colours you could make that whole flow look like a giant Blockly program!
Groups certainly do help to organise flows, but, for example, if you want to add nodes which increases the height of a group then you still need to manually select all the groups below the current one and move them down. It would be useful if there were a way of selecting them all without having to zoom out, select, move, and zoom back in again.
Another (or alternative) feature might be the ability to tell it to adjust all groups down so they don't overlap.
But it is no great deal to minimise the workspace
lasso the groups and move them down. I would much prefer efforts be concentrated on more useful developments.
Though I acknowledge it may be a bit more fiddly if you can't shrink the workspace sufficiently to include all your flows, but then scroll to include the lower reaches and move that down first.
If you lasso a group then you have to drag on it's boundary to move it, dragging on a node within it deselects then moves that node within the group. (?)
If you lasso a group and some nodes you can move them all by dragging on a node not in the group.
As JBudd says ( &thanks for info) you have to now click on the boundary of a lassoed group rather than anywhere within the lassoed area. (Applies to Edge, Firefox and Chrome)
Ah right - didn't spot you were referring to groups specifically. Yes, this is something we did change in 3.1 to improve the overall user experience of interacting with groups.
OK so the new workround to get easier dragging of lassoed groups is to stick a nominal node on the workspace as a handle for dragging and then lasso the groups and the nominal node.
