Factorio Forums

It is.
viewtopic.php?p=310151#p310151

Sorry, but it seems, that focusing and text selection (number input is also text) is for Koub and me so similar, that it should belong into one thread. And when you think over it, it’s clear that it is so.

For example the min-max input for personal logistic, there are two inputs. How should that behave? You cannot select both texts. Is already described here.

I don't care how the min-max on personal logistic behaves. My request is specifically about after the user directly and manually focuses a numeric input. After they click or press tab. Basically the opposite of this thread, which is about automatically focusing.

Hm. That all hangs together. Nothing is more irritating, than if one part of GUI is doing it so, and In the other similar input fields it behave differently. If you want to have changes on the GUI it’s good to look at the whole and think in components instead of optimize only one aspect.

But to make peace (you have a point in arguments) I re-separated this into two threads.

This was the merged topic:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=48203 Cursor placement in "Select a signal"

To be fair, my suggestion here should also apply in Select a Signal, but that's only because I intend for it to apply everywhere in the whole game UI. I'm a lot more interested in the settings dialog and custom mod UIs and the half dozen other places.

Put another way, if you implemented my idea here, it wouldn't address the request in that other thread. And if you implemented their request, it wouldn't address mine.

sparr wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:56 pm

When I press tab to move the focus into a numeric textfield containing "50", it is really unlikely that what I want to change it to is "501" or "50999", and very likely that I want to change it to "1" or "999". To that end, the UX would be streamlined if the contents were selected when it was focused, at least via keyboard navigation (script .focus() or mouse clicking are less clear cut).

Selecting existing content of a (single line) text box when it is focused by pressing tab is typical behaviour in other GUIs. So not only a benefit in Factorio as you describe, also improved consistency with other GUIs (more intuitive).

Another typical behaviour in other GUIs is that after double-clicking on a text box, it will have focus and the word under the pointer will be selected. Factorio behaviour is internally inconsistent: for numeric values, it will have focus and the existing value will be cleared, except (at least) the seed in the map generator; for other text boxes (eg blueprint name/description, train stop name, save name) nothing special happens for a double-click. I think it should consistently select the word (or number), which I note retains the current behaviour of "double-click then type" as an idiomatic way to replace numeric values.