Bugzilla – Bug 9124
Slider text box editing is unusable
Last modified: 2008-08-16 01:49:08 UTC
The text boxes accompanying sliders are nearly unusable for many settings. They really behave oddly - probably the effects of trying to enforce numeric ranges. The ones that insist on increments of 5 are the worst. Try with the Thumbnail Size box. It tries to force the number to 25 or 250 a lot of time in the middle of an edit. Try deleting a digit, or inserting one and the number will change of its own accord. To change 130 to 135 you would normally delete the 5, then type in a 0, but when the 5 is deleted, the number reverts to 25 (but not always - it's inconsistent). For Text Entry Timing it works OK. Most likely because the increments are 1 and the lower bound is 1. Larger numbers are forced to 100. Still, if you had '20' and attempted to change it to 25 by doing 20 > 205 > 20, you couldn't do it. You'll get 20 > 205 > 100. The slider is a very poor user control for large numbers such as the thumbnail size. It's difficult to set a number such as 120 using the slider because of the resolution. Go back to just text boxes. Where sliders are used (and actually enhance the interface), the text boxes should probably only be used for information and disabled as an active form element.
change 22582 - add a 500ms delay before validating input. Please play with it and let me know whether this is still too short (or too long).
That's much better. I'm not sure what the effects of having a too long value would be. Don't all the values also get validated when the input box loses focus?
> I'm not sure what the effects of having a too long value > would be. Don't all the values also get validated when the input box loses > focus? No, not all values have a validator. The sliders though do: you can't enter a value larger than the slider's maximum value. It will reset to its max. Unless you submit the form faster then the slider updates (<500ms).