How should entering numbers / using the arrow keys work?

[Colen]

Hi everyone,

We're considering different ways for a feature to work, and we're not sure that either way is "right". So, we thought we'd ask you guys to weigh in, and see what the community's opinion was.

When an incrementer (a control with a number, an up arrow, and a down arrow) has the focus in Hero Lab, instead of clicking, you can use the arrow keys to increase or decrease the value in it.

For example, let's say you're adding ranks to a skill. Instead of clicking on the "increase" button on the incrementer, you can press the up or right arrow key on your keyboard to add one rank to that skill. Press again to add another.

Forums poster Duggan recently suggested, in another thread, that we let you add multiple ranks to an incrementer at once. For example, holding Shift and pressing the "up" (or "right") arrow key would add 5 ranks to a skill; holding Ctrl and pressing "up" would add 10 ranks. In this way, you could quickly add many ranks to a skill, without having to press up 5+ times.

There's also another way we could handle this - by allowing you to simply type numbers directly into the incrementer. For example, if you wanted to increase a skill directly to 12 ranks, you could simply type "12" [enter] and it would be done. You could then tab to the next incrementer, type the number of ranks there, and enter those too. (Currently you have to press space to start editing the value in the incrementer, so it's not quite as easy.)

The catch is - these methods interfere with each other, so we can't do both. We can only implement one of them, and that's how Hero Lab will work forever.

Which of these sounds better to you? I've posted a poll, so you can vote - if a significant number of people prefer one over the other, that's how we'll implement it in Hero Lab.

[Duggan]

At least for Mutants and Masterminds, the tabbing through doesn't work as nicely as I'd like because the order goes from left to right and when I'm entering in skills, I'm usually either going in a somewhat random order, if building an original character, or going straight down the like alphabetically, if entering one already written down.

^_^ And I suppose there's no chance of being able to set things like the skills to work by 4's and 8's, is there?

[Colen]

If you're not tabbing through stuff anyway, have you tried just clicking on the value in the incrementer, and entering the new value? For example, to change a skill to a +10 bonus, just click on it and type 10, then hit enter. That will be quicker than pressing up 10 times, and probably just as fast as pressing Ctrl+up once.

Increasing by 4s and 8s would work fine for M&M, but would be very confusing everywhere else.

[ogexam]

If you do the arrow key incrementing idea what about there be a configuration value somewhere to say what the default increment will be. So they can set it like:
arrow key: 1
shift arrow key: 5
crtrl arrow key: 10

or whatever values they want.

[Colen]

It'll be fixed - shift will always be 5, ctrl will always be 10. That way there's a consistent user experience, instead of HL working differently for different games / on different computers - that would be potentially confusing to the user.

[ogexam]

Consistency is key!

Though if you give the user the ability to change the number, that would give you default consistency, but allow the user to change that to what they want.