Feature proposal: shortened drop down list of accounts for entering transactions

[Derek Atkins]

"Charles Day" <cedayiv at gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Jannick Asmus <jannick.news at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> entering transactions (e.g. in the General Ledger) all accounts are
>> offered in the drop down list. Wouldn't it ease the use to offer just a
>> shortened list of 5, 10 or so account which were lately used? Certainly
>> there should be an option to see all accounts if the one needed is not
>> in the shortened list.
>>
>
> How about listing the most recently used accounts twice: once at the top of
> the list, then again in the alphabetically sorted list? In other words, the
> drop-down list would show most recently used accounts at the top, followed
> by the complete list.

I was thinking about this.  When I first read it I thought "wow, yeah,
maybe that would work"..  But then I realized that the way the
drop-down works is that it puts you in the MIDDLE of the list at the
closest matching account.  So if you DIDN'T want to use something from
the "recent list" then you'd be even more screwed because you then
need to find the right place in the list.

I think the biggest issue here is that when you have deep accounts
(or use something like the SKR04 tree) the full account names get
to be very big (and very repetative), so they often times overrun
the width of the drop-down.  So it would be better to display the
accounts more right-justified than left justified...  Or at least
let some of the left-hand portions of the text get lost instead of
the right-hand portions.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available