Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 70602
Custom animation list always scrols to top
Last modified: 2014-05-02 13:18:33 UTC
When several animated objects are present on a slide, not all animations will be visible in the list on the "Custom animation" taks pane. the issue is that the list will always scroll back to list the first effects when an effect down the list is edited. Steps to illustrate the issue * Open a blank presentation * Add a rectangle and copy it say 20 times, drag the copies on different places, (optionally) color them ... * Now select all, apply the appear effect. * The list in the "custom effects" task pane pane is now filled with 20 entries. Only 8 to 12 (depending on your screen resolution) are displayed. * Let us now change the animation properties of the last item 1) scroll down the list 2) click the last item 3) click the "change" effect and make it "diamond". After applying the effect, the list is redrawn, displaying the first items again. Thus, if we would like to edit the one but last item, we again have to scroll down, before we can select the one but last item and edit the animation settings. I feel that the scrolling state of the list should not be reset by the application each time an edit is performed.
Reassigned.
This is a quite obvious user interface issue. It probably should receive more attention than it currently does. To illustrate the issue, I attached a small presentation. It contains 10 animated shapes, and depending on your screen resolution, some of the entries of the objects under "Custom Animation" will not be displayed on the screen. Suppose we want to edit the animation settings of object 9: - We scroll down - Click the object and then the "change" button, choose an effect and click "OK" After the edit, the list auto-scrols to the top, despite the fact that Object 9 remains the highlighed object. To continue working with the objects down the list, the user has each time again to scroll down throughout the entire list.
Created attachment 51653 [details] Sample presentation to illustrate the issue
I was able to reproduce this issue with OOo-dev 3.3.0 (DEV300_m71 build 9481) on Windows XP using the original steps described by ftack, as well as the follow-up example attachment provided. If you have a high resolution screen, exploring this issue may be easier if you re-size the Impress window to be smaller, so that fewer items are displayed in the “Custom Animation” object list. The following tests can be done with either a new or an existing presentation. Behavior with the “Change...” and “Remove” buttons: 1) Add a rectangle to the screen. By default the shapes toolbar is at the bottom of the screen. 2) Copy the rectangle on the slide until there are more items than will fit in the list in the “Custom Animation” section of the Tasks pane. Resizing the window will help minimize the number of shapes needed. 3) Select all of the shapes on the slide and click “Add...”, then apply the “Appear” effect. 4) Deselect them, and scroll down the list and select one of the last shapes created. 5) Click the “Change...” button, and change the effect, as mentioned in ftack's steps. 6) The list of objects will automatically scroll to the top, but the selection will not change. The object that you just modified will remain selected, even though it is not currently visible in the list. Clicking “Change...” again will allow you to change the effect on that object. 7) Repeat steps 1-4, but then click the “Remove” button. The list automatically scrolls to the top, but the object is no longer selected. Clicking “Add...” will not allow you to add an effect to that object. This seems to be the correct behavior, as the object is no longer in the list (since it no longer has any animation), but it could still be confusing to the user given that modifying an object's animation causes the same behavior from the list of objects. Effect changes from the main screen: 1) Add a rectangle to the screen. By default the shapes toolbar is at the bottom of the screen. 2) Copy the rectangle on the slide until there are more objects than will fit in the list in the “Custom Animation” section of the Tasks pane. Resizing the window will help minimize the number of shapes needed. 3) Select all of the shapes on the slide and click “Add...”, then apply the “Appear” effect. 4) Deselect them, and scroll down the list to one of the last shapes created. 5) Select it, and modify the settings without using the “Change...” or “Remove” buttons. This includes changing the “Start”, “Property”, or “Speed” dropdown selections. 6) The object list will automatically scroll back to the top. Changes made to the animation effect without opening the “Change...” dialog also cause the list to scroll back to the top, but leave the current object selected. This behavior appears to be consistent will all types of objects (charts, pictures, tables, etc), not just shapes. Clicking the “Change...” button causes the issue even if nothing is actually changed. The list scrolls to the top when the change dialog is closed, regardless of whether anything was actually changed. I agree with ftack that this can be an inconvenience for users working with many animated objects on their slides.
As given in description AOO410m18(Build:9764) - Rev. 1589052 2014-04-22 12:11 - Linux x86_64 Debian