focus highlight comment field after highlighting?

bennett.smith
Inconsistent behavior when clicking on already-highlighted text in Z7. Sometimes, selecting highlighted text will focus the comment field in the sidebar, and you can begin typing a comment. Sometimes, the comment field is not focused, and you have to manually click again on the comment, this time in the sidebar, to make commenting possible. It would be nice if this were made consistent.

I personally would like to be able to type a comment immediately after highlighting text, instead of needing to click again to do. (Indeed, sometimes you have to click twice, once on the highlighted text in the reader, and once in the sidebar, to be able to type). That means that the comment field would automatically be focused, with the cursor blinking and ready to input text, immediately after the mouse button is released and the highlight is selected. If you don't want to type, just click away. But that might be a minority view.
  • martynas_b
    That behavior is intentional. When an annotation is newly created and doesn't yet have a comment, it's likely the user will want to add one. However, if a comment already exists, the likelihood of needing to edit it decreases, so we avoid focusing on the comment field to prevent unnecessary interruptions.

    Could you please explain your workflow so we can better understand it? Specifically, under what circumstances would you prefer the existing comment field to be focused automatically?
  • bennett.smith
    Ah I see, now I understand that the difference in behavior when clicking on an already-existing highlight comes down to whether there is already a comment or not. I didn't realize that before. Thanks for clearing it up. I understand the rationale.

    My idea, which maybe I would regret wishing for, is that the comment field would automatically be focused after a highlight is created (this is a separate issue, not related to already-existing highlights). That is, the default behavior would be to immediately be able to add text to a highlight. I usually want to comment on highlights, and the extra click is ever-so-slightly annoying.
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