I feel that having the text auto-selected upon entering the edit mode presents a hazard. F2 must be followed by a cursor key, or the entire text will be replaced. When I want to edit an item, I usually am not looking to overwrite it completely. I’d prefer to simply have the cursor at the end of the text, with no selection. What do you think?
I’m used to this behavior in other programs, like Excel, but I don’t really have any preference for one or the other…
To start editing without a selection and the cursor at the end, use the keyboard shortcut “ea”. Similarly, to start with no selection and the cursor at the start, use “ei”. These are inspired by VI/VIM. The “i” is for Insert, and the “a” is for Append.
Reference: Checkvist help/reference
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Wow. I thought I knew everything there is about entering the edit mode. I mean, ee or F2 is featured in the hints sidebar, as well as at the very beginning of the Reference. The other two are buried in the Keyboard Shortcuts section, which I admit, I did not study closely. I’m habituated to F2 by other programs, Excel among them.
I’m still struggling with this behaviour. Can we perhaps have an option in Settings, to not have entire contents selected when starting to edit? Having a cursor positioned at the end of the first line would be great… ea and ei are not so great for anyone not used to Vim, plus they do not work on notes.
Hello @rubaboo ,
ea and ei should already work on beta with notes as well. Hope you’ll like it 
Kind regards,
KIR
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I had the same feeling about F2 that rubaboo mentioned at the start of this topic (wishing it would not highlight the whole item). I’m happy to have read M_D’s response about ea and ei, those will be very useful for me (I just have to remember the commands).
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The ea/ei shortcuts are awesome. Thank you Friends for already bringing up and solving so many of the things I search for on how to do!
That said I would be suportive of Rubaboo’s idea of a setting to change the default behaviour for mouse double click. Sometimes the mouse is in fact the quickest route (eg navigating a long distance from your current focus) and at the moment you have to:
Single Click > e > a
whereas a double click with option to focus end would save a step.
Setting would be something like:
Behaviour when Double Clicking Item: [dropdown]
- Text selected [default]
- Cursor after text
- Cursor before text
n.b. I would leave ‘ee’ the same. This would be only for mouse clicks.
Hi @danson,
Thanks for the suggestion! We want to avoid adding options as much as possible. They add flexibility but also increase the complication.
As for the double-click behaviour - maybe instead of adding the option, Checkvist should try to put the cursor at the place where the double-click occurred. It is not easy to implement, but so far I like it more than adding an option. The complication comes from the fact that editable list item is not the same as the rendered one (markdown links are extended etc.). But maybe we could find a good enough approach for that.
What do you think?
My idea was to have an option for F2 behaviour, not a mouse double-click behaviour. I never knew the two actions are actually producing the same result. I’m here for a mouseless experience. Otherwise I’d most likely just use Workflowy free tier.
The gist of my proposal it is to stop auto-selecting the entire text of the node upon entering edit mode (no matter which way – via double-click or F2). In order to avoid an accidental overwrite. I’m afraid it’s too easy to do this by mistake and not realize right away. Combined with only a rudimentary undo/redo functionality in Checkvist, that’s a recipe for a potential loss of a valuable note. While it’s probably possible to recover from a backup, it would take (a) an extra effort and (b) realizing the mistake in the first place.
I suggested this as an option in order to not upset users who like the current behaviour. I don’t know why anyone would though. Do people mostly overwrite their notes, or do they edit/add to them? I personally would prefer if F2 just behaved the same as ea, always.
@rubaboo Full text selection after starting the edit may be useful.
I like it because after F2 I usually press either “left” arrow or “right” arrow and place the cursor before or after the text, without the selection. So one shortcut to start editing may be used for insert and append mode, but with an extra keypress.
The explicit option also makes sense. In fact, this could be an interesting place to tell people about ea and ei
So I have quite a strong UX view on this based on what Kir has written:
I like it because after F2 I usually press either “left” arrow or “right” arrow and place the cursor before or after the text, without the selection.
So here you are effectively confirming that the default behaviour is “usually” not the behaviour you want - it requires a 2nd keypress. Thus you have optimised for a niche case (overwriting text).
I agree you want to minimise options. But you should optimise for the majority case - and I would say this is likely 90% to add something to the end of a task.
However even if it is not you are STILL better off. Here is why:
Current Behaviour = F2 selects text
To edit beginning: F2 + left
To edit end: F2 + right
4 keypresses in aggregate.
Proposal: F2 focuses end
To edit beginning: F2 + HOME
To edit end: F2
3 keypresses aggregate.
Then if my theory is right (say80% of edits is to edit the end then you are saving a keypress 80% of the time and for the 20% case you are no worse off than before becuase you can hit ‘HOME’ to reach the start anyway.
And if you really wanted to edit the whole thing then SHIFT+HOME or CTRL+A works like it always does.
tl;dr - UI should optimise for the majoirty use case which you yourself said is “usually” NOT fully selected text.
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As for this - I am not sure I’d prefer needing to do ‘precise’ clicks when I just want to open a task quickly with the mouse and add something. I think the majority of UI i’ve used would always open at the end and I would accept and prefer needing to press ‘home’ to go to the start (per my last post above). Consistency with established UI conventions has a power of its own.
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Thank you, I had exactly the same reservations on both arguments - introducing “precise” mouse clicks, and justifying F2 + mandatory Home/End vs F2 + optional Home.
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