Completed Proposal Select Track button in TCP

Proposal pages help us get from feature requests into actual plans. This page is a proposal to add a button to the Track Control Panel to select the entire track.

Proposal pages are used on an ongoing basis by the Audacity development team and are open to edits from visitors to the wiki. They are a good way to get community feedback on a proposal.

• Note: Proposals for Google Summer of Code projects are significantly different in structure, are submitted via Google's web app and may or may not have a corresponding proposal page.

The Problem

• Many users are unaware how to use the Track Control Panel to select the whole track
  • In fact many users are unaware how to select the whole track (see many Forum posts)
• When the Track Control Panel is minimized or shrunk vertically the "white space" target area for track selection is very small - see Koz' "red square" below
• Lack of adequate visual cue (there is a hovertext tip - but that is inadequate)
• Because the orientation of the Collapse/Expand button black triangle changes, depending on state, it makes descriptions of the safe target area more complex in the documentation.
• The Collapse/Expand button in the Track Control panel is wider than necessary

Proposed Feature

Add a button for "Select Track" in the Track Control Panel.

• Shrink the Collapse/Expand button (horizontally) to half the width of the Track Control Panel
• That will release enough space to add a button labelled "Select".

Pressing the "Select" button selects the whole track.

Optional Extra: "Select" button is an up/down button to unselect/select the whole track.

Steve (talk) 06:54, 21 March 2019 (EDT): Please see comment on discussion page.

Peter 25Mar: this is already achievable by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking in the "white space" or now in the Select button

Developer/QA Backing

• Peter
• Koz

Use Cases

• There have been very many posters on the Forum who fail to "discover" whole track selection. Over the years Koz has made many posts in the Forum highlighted with a red-square as the only safe target For whole track selection.

Details

See GUI Examples below.

Note that if this implemented , some pages in the Manual will need to be updated, but in a past change we removed the TCP from many images in the Manual when it added no benefit.

• See this PS Manual page

GUI Examples

Previous Feature Requests relating to this proposal

None - curiously. But once folk are taught how to do it, it doesn't bother them any more.