Recent Info Tip Preferences option addition is somewhat confusing

Help & Support
1

I think the recent addition to the Info Tip preferences isn't as intuitive in its current state as it could be:

dopus_2024-12-04_01-14-34

Firstly, there are two UI methods Info Tips can be shown:

  1. Via hovering over an item with the mouse cursor.
  2. Via holding the keyboard (Ctrl key) when an item is selected.

The preference I have issue with is: Only with key held down. If you have no experience with using Info Tips, it's not too obvious what this affects. Does this affect the cursor method, or the keyboard method? Is it changing the keyboard method from Ctrl to something else? The first option to enable Info Tips was in relation to both methods, does this option affect both? No, it only affects the cursor method. There's just enough ambiguity here that it makes it a bit confusing. If this option confuses you, making sense of what exactly the Keyboard delay is affecting could also too.

A clearer approach could be to break the options down into two subsections: Via mouse, and via keyboard. It would also be nice if both the mouse and keyboard methods had similar options, e.g. we could customise the keyboard method from being Ctrl to a different key, or set a delay on the cursor method.

I also have some previous comments about the keyboard method from 2021: In short, an alternative to keyboard delay could be to wait for a lone Ctrl key-up to occur, then the Info Tip can be triggered at will, just as fast, or faster than hovering with the mouse cursor from item to item. This isn't the same as setting the delay to 1 ms since that triggers the Info Tip when simply trying to Ctrl + C copy an item, which is why I've kept the value set high enough that I don't trigger it during normal uses of Ctrl. I really like the Info Tip and wish it was more capable at previewing text too.

Thanks,
Directory Opus 13.11.4

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You can push F1 (or use the ≡ menu, Help) on any Preferences page to open the manual with more detailed explanations of what those options do.

From Info Tips [Directory Opus Manual] :

  • Only with key held down: Tooltips won't appear unless the specified qualifier key is held down when you mouseover the file or folder.
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Thanks, but these kinds of read-the-docs responses never really satisfy. I grant you that the needed information is knowable (docs are appreciated), but should the user need to dig into the documentation when the presentation of the options could be done in a less ambiguous way, thus reducing the likelihood one would need to in the first place? If it was a complex option, sure, cramming all the info into a preferences page makes no sense, but simple options like this? Their impact should be self-evident, in my opinion, and how they are presented to the user can achieve this.

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