Selecting materials from plan materials

[tommy1]

We made a material change on the roofs in one plan and when I select the roof and try to change the material for the ridge cap, most of the time I can use the keyboard to hit the first letter and it takes me to the textures starting with that letter. Well, it doesn't do that. I have to scroll down to find the texture. Many times I can do this and it works. I don't know why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Anyone notice this? 

[rlackore]

I've found that if you first select any material, it sort of "activates" the dbx and then I can type to search.

[tommy1]

Thanks. That worked. Apparently sometimes I do that and sometimes not.

[Joe_Carrick]

Robert is correct and this is SWB (Standard Windows Behavior).  Basically what is happening is that the "Tree/List" has to have focus in order to intercept the key strokes.  It only gets the focus when you select something in that List.  It could be possible for the program to set the focus when a Folder is expanded but that might have other consequences that might not be desired.

[rlackore]

Robert is correct and this is SWB (Standard Windows Behavior).

 

The strange part is that there is a highlighted selection, which gives the impression that the dbx is "active" and ready to go.

[Joe_Carrick]

The strange part is that there is a highlighted selection, which gives the impression that the dbx is "active" and ready to go.

Yeah, but that's only because it's the initial row in the Tree List - that's a part of the setup of the "Control".  There is a separate programming function to set the "Focus".

[dshall]

The strange part is that there is a highlighted selection, which gives the impression that the dbx is "active" and ready to go.

Frustrating behavior,  I wish I did not have to click to activate......  but life could be worse.

[Joe_Carrick]

I think this is probably a "Paper Cut" classification in terms of programming.  It should be just a single line of code to have the focus automatically set. 

[tommy1]

I have found that you don't even need to click on something to activate it, you can just move the scroll bar a little and it will activate it.

[Joe_Carrick]

I have found that you don't even need to click on something to activate it, you can just move the scroll bar a little and it will activate it.

That's because the scroll bar is a child control of the TreeList.  When you click on the scroll bar you have set the focus to the scroll bar.  However, since that only accepts navigation keys, all other keys are passed up to the parent for processing.