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Selecting an item is as easy as clicking on it or touching it. Selecting multiple items is also easy, if we provide checkboxes. For these input methods, you thus have two way to select items: you either touch the item or click on it, or you mark its checkbox. When using the keyboard, however, the clearest way to handle item selection is to unify both: when you select the item by pressing a key, you also immediately mark its checkbox.
| Mouse | Keyboard | Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
Supports highlighting item | colA1 | colA1 | colA2 |
Supports selecting single item without marking its checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports selecting single item by marking its checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports selecting multiple items by marking their checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports executing an operation when selected, but not marked | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
If any of this is not entirely clear, please refer to the more detailed explanations and the matrix below.
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It is highly desirable that an operation is executed atomically on multiple items as this is expected semantically and allows properly supporting the undo functionality we plan to introduce with 5.0.
Summary
| Mouse | Keyboard | Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
Supports highlighting item | colA1 | colA1 | colA2 |
Supports selecting single item without marking its checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports selecting single item by marking its checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports selecting multiple items by marking their checkbox | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Supports executing an operation when selected, but not marked | colA1 | colB1 | colB2 |
Mockups
Tree view - single item
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