[Sigia-l] Reports w/ Horizontal Scrolls

[pauric]

Oleg: "I was considering to resort to holding Space key on the keyboard to
enable the pan mode, with cursor changing its shape to "hand". It is the
solution implemented e.g. in Adobe Photoshop. What would you say?"

I would say this depends on the context that the function and application
reside;

Function: In the example of Photoshop it is an non-obvious function to
enable the alt feature, but it is applied consistently across all tools.
Once learned it becomes an inherent part of the Photoshop interface
interaction.

Application: If the application is specialised, not consumer grade like
photoshop, then intra-user learning occurs.  That is, if the alt function
you are suggesting is specific to panning a table in one part of the
application then its harder to discover and remember.  However, to use Lotus
Notes as an example with its extremely convoluted menu architecture, when a
user cant accomplish a task they will ask a colleague/team and someone will
invariably have the answer.  Specialist knowledge, group application, shared
intra-user learning.

To answer your question.  If you have a consumer, single user, application
then you should see if you can apply the space bar alt function across the
entire application.  If it is a shared, enterprise grade, application then
you can rely on users helping each other with nuanced functions like this.

Ziya, wasnt able to find any info on event handlers that can differentiate
between whether the user has highlighted text or not with no change in
onclick state.  Could you point me in the right direction - many thanks,
pauric.