The scroll sheel - suggestion

Core Development Feature Requests
1

Ok, it is hard to change established ways people do things.

I do fully get that.

But recently I have been caught up using other programs that have their own quirks when compared to Node-red but it made me think.:
(Yes: dangerous for me to do that,but hey... ) :wink:

In the edit screen you get a windowed view of the tab and move around it by (usually) holding down the MMB and moving the mouse.
This gives you horizontal and vertical scrolling.
You can go to the edges and move the scroll bar to quickly move.

Another way is to use the scroll wheel on the mouse to scroll UP and DOWN.
This is slightly advantageous but now I fear it is introducing bad habits.
Why?

Well, these other programs have/are similar where you have a bigger work space and you get a windowed view.
There are similar mechanics to moving the view but one MAIN difference is what the scroll wheel does.
In those programs it zooms in/out.

Now I get that I am comparing apples to oranges but gee, what a great thing that is to have.
I am working on a tab, move to where I want to work and then want to zoom in.
I scroll the scroll wheel and it zooms in - on the OTHER programs.
I come back to Node-red and am doing similar things and want to zoom in.
I get the view wanted in the middle of the screen and wizz the scroll wheel and.....
&*$&$&(!
What I was looking at scrolled off the top/bottom of the screen.

No, there is no magic solution, but I feel that would be a really nice thing to have.

Moving the view is/would still be done by holding the MMB down and dargging the mouse.
Then when positioned, you scroll to zoom in/out.

Just putting the suggestion on the table for consideration.

2

Just my personal opinion ... but the scroll dynamic on Node-RED seems to me to be the correct one. I hate it when the default action on the "SCROLL" wheel isn't to scroll.

The most common action for the scroll wheel is to scroll in most apps. To zoom, typically you hold the ctrl key with the scroll wheel.

On my mouse, I also have left/right switches on the scroll wheel and that scrolls left/right as expected.

If anything is missing from the scroll wheel dynamic in Node-RED, I'd say that it would be that ctrl-wheel zooms the browser and not the node-red edit panel. Not sure if that is fixable in settings, I've not checked and I don't see an easy way to do it. Settings seem to be for keyboard only.

1 Like
3

Don’t forget different platforms might do things differently I.e. windows, max, Linux (multiple variations)

1 Like
5

@Trying_to_learn What does scroll do in your browser and word processor?

6

@TotallyInformation
Yes it is usual for the scroll wheel to scroll. That's why it is called that.
Using the ctl scroll wheel the entire screen zooms - as was mentioned.

This is both good and bad as I remember to my very early days of using NR.
I would change the zoom of the browser and the GUI (Dashboard) side of things would go to pot.
The little + and - buttons (bottom right) on the edit screen zoom better, as they change only the view size (or zoom level) of the edit screen. Not all the tabs/windows on the browser.

Yes, it may be a setting I need to set to fix this problem, but I shall continue with the reply.

--

I use Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Firefox. Alas not the official one, but the one that is supplied with Ubuntu.

--

@Colin
As I am comparing apples and oranges, you too are.
A word processor is a text based program where things are arranged vertically.
Although the width (visible size) can be changed it is usual to have the page width set to the width of the screen.
The same can be said about the browser.
The "contents" are set to meet the width of the screen.
But in this case it is the GUI (or in NR terms: The Dashboard)
So you have a wider than screen edit screen, but the dashboard is set to the screen width.

The edit area of NR is somewhat wider than that and to view the total width: any nodes would be somewhat small and difficult to use.
I have also just seen that you can't zoom out enough to see the total width of the edit area.
Unless I have not set something.

NR is a graphical program and the mechanics of the screen are different to a word processor.

The other programs are a CAD type.
And yes, I agree: programs are allowed to do things differently.

But holding the MMB allows scrolling in any/all directions - as with NR.
Then if you want to zoom in: you scroll the wheel.

This allows easy control of what is shown on the screen.

I am only mentioning this because I did a few hours on the CAD and came back to NR and was floundering a bit with the display area until I got back into the mindset of how NR works.

AGAIN:
I am not saying this is THE WAY.
And it is my fault for riding different horses.
But how they handle the edit screen and the zooming with the scroll wheel does seem very.... intuitive.

It would/could be nice to allow this to happen in/with NR.

7

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.