#2790 Usability and UI for references can be improved

Ulrich Windl — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 13:23:14 -0000

I wasn't aware that I cannot suggest new features here.

#2790 Usability and UI for references can be improved

Dominik Reichl — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 12:24:57 -0000

Ticket moved from /p/keepass/bugs/2217/

#2217 Usability and UI for references can be improved

Dominik Reichl — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 12:24:47 -0000

Moving to open feature requests.

Thanks and best regards,
Dominik

#2217 Usability and UI for references can be improved

Paul — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 09:03:36 -0000

Please stop raising bugs. Open a thread in Open Discussion instead.
https://sourceforge.net/p/keepass/discussion/329220/

cheers, Paul

Usability and UI for references can be improved

Ulrich Windl — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 07:04:31 -0000

References are a nice concept behind the scenes, but the user interface (UI) is not that nice IMHO.
So I have a few proposals for improvement:

When right-clicking ("RMB", right mouse button) on any field value, offer an option "copy as reference" that will copy the field as reference identifier to the clipboard (with no timeout, please!), allowing to insert that value to another field, causing that field to refer to the original field. That would greatly help users to use references IMHO.
When a field contains a reference, the "reference identifier" (i.e. not the field's value) is being displayed. Wouldn't it make more sense to display the referenced value instead (wen double-clicking the value, and not the reference identifier is copied to clipboard anyway. In addition (to point out that it's a referenced value) the value could be displayed in "hyperlink style" (e.g. underlined)
Another useful function would be a RMB "follow reference", causing the referenced field being show (i.e.: the corresponding entry in "edit mode" with the input focus on the particular field.
Documentation: AFAIR the documentation say nothing whether it is valid to reference a field that contains a reference itself (i.e. reference to a reference). Assumption is that (like UNIX symbolic links) that references will be followed until the "chain" ends. A possible improvement when reference chains are detected is that Keepass suggests to "shortcut" the reference, meaning replace the indirect reference with a direct one. Obviously reference loops are a bad thing; if not detected yet (I don't know, haven't tried), then they should be detected and flagged, preferably with an option to fix/break the loop.

Recent changes to 2790: Usability and UI for references can be improved

#2790 Usability and UI for references can be improved

#2790 Usability and UI for references can be improved

#2217 Usability and UI for references can be improved

#2217 Usability and UI for references can be improved

Usability and UI for references can be improved