Built-In Mouse Wheel Support: On Hover AND Key Focus

[maxicon]

The built-in mouse wheel support for numeric controls is very convenient, as it allows comfortable tuning of values using the mouse wheel. But it has a potentially dangerous flaw: the default mode is "On Key Focus", which means that when you click inside the control, you can change its value by scrolling. But when they move the mouse somewhere else in the window and scroll (e.g. in order to zoom a graph), the focus stays in the numeric control, and you unintentionally change the value of the numeric control. This behavior has the potential to damage our hardware, as we are controlling high voltages and pressures using numeric controls.

Setting the Built-In Mouse Wheel Support property to "On Hover" keeps the values from changing when the mouse cursor is not above the control. But unfortunately it also changes the value when the control does not have the key focus, leading to another source of unintentional value changes.

So my suggestion is: If you add the option "On Hover AND Key Focus" to the Built-In Mouse Wheel Support property, accidental changes of values by scrolling could be prevented effectively.

[X.]

I have been bitten by the first feature before, so my support for any type of better behavior. But I would stop at changing the default to 'on hover'. Imposing to have the user bring the control into focus to be able to act on it with the mouse wheel sort of defeat the purpose of speeding up user interaction, IMO.

You could track the mouse and bring the control underneath it into focus (and use the default option) to avoid destroying the plant by mistake.

[Manzolli]

I would like to have both behaviours, selectable. Could be: none, "focus", "hover" or both. The default would be "focus". The none would be nice to temporarily disable the event catch.

[iannicholson]

 wrote:

... So my suggestion is: If you add the option "On Hover AND Key Focus" to the Built-In Mouse Wheel Support property, accidental changes of values by scrolling could be prevented effectively.

---

This seems to have made it in sometime before LabVIEW 2017 was released, as I have the option for either or both (or none) on numeric controls.

[wiebe@CARYA]

>This seems to have made it in sometime before LabVIEW 2017 was released, as I have the option for either or both (or none) on numeric controls.

Agreed. This should be marked as: Implemented

[Darren]

Available in LabVIEW 2017 and later

[Mads]

The funny thing here is if you choose to use the On Hover or Key Focus option LabVIEW will, contrary to what Windows does (in control panels e.g.) and thus many users expect - prioritize key focus.

So we have put the key focus on a control, but then hover the mouse over a control and start scrolling:

The user then expects the control that he is now hovering over to change, but LabVIEW says that because the key focus is still on the other control it will scroll-change *that* control instead. If the same operation is done in e.g. the region control panel of Windows 11 the control we hover over will change, not the one with key focus.