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Magnolia allows me select a single item or multiple items easily by using the mouse, the keyboard or touch gestures. All input methods are interchangeable.

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Description of desired behavior

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Remarks on different characteristics of input methods

In particular, _you may put the focus on an item with the keyboard

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- you can do that without actually selecting it. By touching an item or clicking on it, however, you already interact with it and thus you always move both focus and selection

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at the

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same time. Consequently, Magnolia only supports item selection

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for these input methods.

Selecting multiple items is also easy and intuitive

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as long as you provide checkboxes next to the items. For mouse and touch, you

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have two ways to select items: you either touch or click the item

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or you mark its checkbox.

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Selecting multiple items using the keyboard

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is more difficult and requires to hold down a modifier key while selecting an item.

Please

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refer to the more detailed explanations and the matrix in the paragraphs below.

Focus and selection

Focus an item

An item is focused on hovering the mouse over it or by moving the keyboard focus on the item using one of the arrow keys (UP, RIGHT, DOWN, LEFT) while holding down the Ctrl/Cmd modifier key. Focusing an item mainly visually highlights emphasizes it indicating that the item could also actually be selected .
When the same item remains focused, details on it are shown after a delay as well. No details on an item are shown in any enabled and visible item details view elsewhere on the interface. The reason for the delay is to prevent the interface from changing too rapidly on quick focus changes, to keep it responsive and to prevent high load on the serverand no actions for it are presented, if that item has the focus only and is not selected as well.

When using the mouse or a touch device, you may only move the focus by also simultaneously selecting an item.

Select a single item

A single item may be selected by clicking on it or , touching it or by hitting the SPACE bar when it has the focus (object selection). If an interface supports selecting multiple items, it shows a checkbox next to an item. Thus, alternatively, this checkbox may be checked to select the item (toggle selection). In both cases, a strong visual marker around the item signals its selection.
So, while an item may be selected without checking its checkbox if you use mouse or touch input, its checkbox is always toggled if you select the item using the keyboard. In addition, any visible and enabled view for item details will refresh immediately and show additional information on the just selected item.

For the keyboard, you may also move the selection to a different item by simply hitting an arrow key. This deselects the currently selected item and selects the one the focus has moved to. Care must be taken that this doesn't cause a flood of events, if a key is hit repeatedly or pressed for a longer period of time. Instead, any implementation should filter events sent to the backend and only eventually deliver the last of the selection events.

Select multiple items

To select multiple items, you repeatedly select single items using their checkboxes until all your items are selected (toggle selection). If you use the checkboxes, all already selected items remain selected and the newly selected items are merely added to the set of selected items.

Alternatively, use a rubber band rectangle when using a mouse to select the items (object selection). Note that in the latter case, the checkboxes of all selected items are also checked as soon as you release the mouse button. A previously selected group of items is first deselected before the newly defined group becomes selected by a rubber band.

Any visible and enabled view for item details will refresh immediately and show additional details on the set of selected items (e.g. summary of all sizes, number of selected items, etc.).

When using the keyboard, selecting multiple items is less easy as it involves pressing a modifier key during selection. You may select a range of items by selecting the first item of that range, then selecting the last item while holding the SHIFT modifier key. You may add or remove an additional item to the set of currently selected items, by pointing at or moving the focus to it, then selecting it while holding down the Ctrl/Cmd modifier key.

The same modifier keys may also work when using the mouse or touch devices, but the preferred as less error-prone way for selecting multiple items using these input methods is by toggling the checkbox.

Select and deselect all items

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You may deselect a single item by unchecking its checkbox or clicking on it while holding down the Ctrl/Command modified modifier key. When using the keyboard, move the keyboard focus on the item, then hit SPACE - hitting SPACE thus toggles a selection. On a touch device, you may only uncheck an item's checkbox to deselect it.

If an item is deselected, all other remaining selected items remain selected.

Deselect all selected items

If you click on a list grid or tree view offering item selection and you do not click on a selectable item, all previously selected items remain selected. You may only deselect all currently selected items if you toggle the "select all items" checkbox to first select all, then deselect all items (see #Select and deselect all items).

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Hybrid selection solves conflicts

Allowing both object selection and toggle selection of items may could result in a confusing interface. Magnolia solves this by actually implementing hybrid selection. In short, this means:

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Open

Open an item for editing or further inspection

By double-clicking or double-tapping an item or hitting Ctrl/Command-O ENTER on a focused (see #Focus an item) or selected item (see #Select a single item), a separate window opens showing an edit or inspection view of the item depending on the permissions of the logged in user.

Executing an operation on selected items

If a view allows to select items, it always also offers operations to be executed on them. Selecting one or multiple items enables only those operations, which are defined on the list set of currently selected items. For any view showing operations, it should be visually very obvious, which operations are currently available and which are not.

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For the list of defined commands, see Usage summary#Focusing, selecting and opening items.

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Tree view supporting selection of multiple items

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Grid view supporting selection of a single item only

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Grid view supporting selection of multiple items