[V12.9] Keyboard navigation of the UI is inconsistent.

[chinagreenelvis]

It's ridiculous. I'm trying to create an AHK script that will allow me to turn something like F1 into a series of tab inputs to navigate from the games list to the "favorite" icon in the details panel, strike it with the spacebar, then shift-tab back again... but the number of tabs it takes to get from a selected game is wildly inconsistent and seems at least partially dependent upon how high up or how far down on the screen it is.

I don't even understand where the first tab input from a selected game goes. It doesn't seem to go anywhere.

The worst part is that the difference in the number of tabs it takes is completely non-reproducible. Sometimes it takes three. Sometimes it takes five. None of it makes a lick of sense.

There are all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for making things hidden and unhidden, but almost no reliable non-mouse navigational functionality. No shortcut to mark a game as completed, or favorite, or hidden, no keybinds for downloading media for selected games.

When dealing with massive collections and sifting through them to organize them, prune them, etc, doing everything with a mouse becomes extraordinarily tedious and time-consuming. With just the right kinds of keypresses, I could go down a list of titles, see the screenshots, and almost immediately decide to flag it for re-categorizing. Unfortunately, to do things quickly, I have to use the "completed" and "favorite" icons since they're the most easily accessible, but I can use those to then turn around and create playlists based on those flags, then unflag everything in the playlist and continue on.

But not being able to do this without the use of a mouse is beyond infuriating at this point and I can't wrap my brain around why the tabbing is so inexplicably wackadoodle.

I apologize for my frustration, but if anyone can shine some light on what is ACTUALLY happening behind the scenes when I'm hitting the tab key (or knows of a navigational shortcut that reliably DOES select a specific portion of the screen), it would be greatly appreciated. I tried using AHK's Window Spy to seek out window controls... but LaunchBox apparently doesn't have any to interact with.

If there's any source of information for this sort of thing, I'd love to be directed to it.

Edited Saturday at 12:33 PM by chinagreenelvis

[JoeViking245]

16 minutes ago, chinagreenelvis said:

I don't even understand where the first tab input from a selected game goes. It doesn't seem to go anywhere.

When it seems to go nowhere, press the Left or Right arrow keys to widen/narrow that section.

18 minutes ago, chinagreenelvis said:

I'm trying to create an AHK script that will allow me to turn something like F1 into a series of tab inputs to navigate from the games list to the "favorite" icon in the details panel, strike it with the spacebar, then shift-tab back again... but the number of tabs it takes to get from a selected game is wildly inconsistent and seems at least partially dependent upon how high up or how far down on the screen it is.

You might try a MouseMove,x,y,z  MouseClick, left instead.  Don't recall on the Default theme, but I know in Omni, the 🤍 [Favorite] icon is always in the same location.  You'll just have the figure out the x/y coordinates for where it's located on your screen.

25 minutes ago, chinagreenelvis said:

No shortcut to mark a game as completed, or favorite, or hidden, no keybinds for downloading media for selected games.

Can always upvote an existing Feature Request (like the one I linked in your other post for Favorite) or create a new request if one doesn't exist.

28 minutes ago, chinagreenelvis said:

not being able to do this without the use of a mouse is beyond infuriating at this point and I can't wrap my brain around why the tabbing is so inexplicably wackadoodle.

The UI is designed to be used by a mouse and keyboard (which includes keyboard shortcuts). Similar to most everything in Windows.  

Keep in mind, having [too] many keyboard shortcuts can possibly things even more convoluted.  You mentioned in your other post about creating a plugin. Have you seen all the keyboard shortcuts Visual Studio has?  Many times, I find it's easier to mouse-to-the-tool.  But yes, certain shortcuts could be in order. (see Feature Request mentioned above)

 

40 minutes ago, chinagreenelvis said:

If there's any source of information for this sort of thing, I'd love to be directed to it.

There is The LaunchBox Strategy Guide page that goes over quite a few things and is continually growing.  It does not currently (that I saw) have an article covering available keyboard shortcuts. (Could be another Feature ("article" rather) Request.)