Hi again
I was working on a FW4 site and was reminded of a really irritating bug. It happens when removing or altering links. I hoped was fixed in FW5beta but unfortunately it seems that it’s still there. Any chance it could be fixed?
- type several words into an html item (with nothing after the last word)
- select that last word, set an external hyperlink to it
- put the cursor just after that last word
- type some spaces and another word
–>this new text becomes an extension of the link, ie is underlined. The user didn’t want this, they want the spaces unlinked and a different link on the new word. - So they select the spaces and the last word, open the hyperlink dialog, and select ‘remove link’. BUG: the link is removed from ALL linked words, including words that were NOT SELECTED.
- the user goes ‘Undo’ to get back to where they were. BUG: the link is restored in the selected text but IS DELETED from the original text.
There is a similar situation if you have an existing link that spans say several words, and you try to change the link on the last word to point to something else:
- make a link that spans several words
- select the last word
- open the hyperlink dialog
- enter a different link. The new link is applied to the last word, but BUG: the entire original link is removed from all the UNSELECTED text!!!
- Go Undo. BUG the original hyperlink is still removed from the unselected text, but remains ONLY to the last word, Undo does NOT fix the removal of the link from the unselected text!!!
Obviously:
-
It should be possible to select some text from a run of linked text, and remove the link from the selected text only, leaving all un-selected text unaffected.
-
The above behaviour should also apply when trying to change part of an exsting run of linked text to a different hyperlink destination.
-
Undo should work. If I make a selection, perform an action, and then hit Undo, I should get back to the state I was in prior to the action. When editing links as above, this is clearly NOT the case. It potentially causes the user to completely lose an external link.
One minor user interface question is: What should happen if the user types a word, makes a link to it, and then continues typing?
Currently, if the insertion point is placed immediately after a link, then newly typed text becomes part of the link. If this is not what the user wants, then they must go through the above rigmarole to undo it.
My personal preference would be the reverse. If I clicked at the end of a link, I would prefer the link to NOT extend in to the new text. If I wanted to extend the text of a link, it would be intuitive and easy to click inside that link somewhere (or better still to select the whole last word of the link), and start typing. This behaviour would avoid or hide most iterations of the bugs described above.
I can well imagine that most experienced Freeway users have learned how to work around this awkwardness. But the failure of undo is really unacceptable, and the way it’s impossible to remove a link from part of a text selection is also unacceptable.
I hope that Joe or someone from Softpress can take note of this.
I would also be interested if others could describe their preference for how Freeway should behave when they type some words immediately after an existing link: should the link become extended, or should the new text be unlinked?
Chris.
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