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

[Charles Day]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> "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.
>

How about changing the way the drop-down list works by either (a) sticking
an extra copy of the "closest matching" account at the top of the list
(above the "most recently used" accounts) and making it the default
selection, or (b) not pre-selecting any account if the user has cleared the
account name before opening the list. I think I would personally prefer (a).

-Charles

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
>