Search result label highlighting problem

[Robert Leach]

Selecting a gene and clicking the magnifying glass should select the entire gene row and select all the array columns, causing them to highlight in blue, however, the highlight does not happen until both the array search magnifying glass is clicked (with no search term) and then the gene search magnifying glass is clicked again.

This behavior can be seen in a long screen-recorded debug session at time indexes 11:36-11:38. You can download the 500MB file here if you need to view it:

http://gen-rlimac.princeton.edu/~rleach/TREEVIEWBUGS/multiple_bugs/multiple_bugs.mov

Rob

[Robert Leach]

I understand better what is happening here now. This issue is actually a side-effect of a separate issue. Before the search is initiated, there is a selected portion of the matrix that is outside of the current matrix view. When a gene is selected in the search window and the magnifying glass is clicked, the labels being highlighted are simply "off-screen". When the array's magnifying glass is clicked, it essentially de-selected every array element. When the gene's magnifying glass is clicked again, it selects the entire row.

The question is whether the search should assume at the start that nothing is selected. I think that it probably should. Here's why: if you search a second time for something else, the search is not restricted to what is currently selected. For consistency's sake, the search should always search everything. I took a screen-recording of this to double-check that my theory was correct, and it was:

http://gen-rlimac.princeton.edu/~rleach/TREEVIEWBUGS/first_search_limited.mov

Note that clicking the array search magnifying glass effectively de-selects everything. This should probably be done before the first search is performed. However, I'm not certain whether deselecting what a user selected is going to be appreciated or not found to be annoying... But since we don't track a selection history, probably the best thing we could do is do the deselection at the last possible moment, so if they decide to close the search window without having performed a search, they don't lose their selection.

This issue is closely related to issue 26, but is slightly different. Issue 26 is about scrolling to the search result (if zoomed in) to bring a result outside the current view into view. This issue is about not limiting the first search to what was selected before performing a search.

[Robert Leach]

Now when you click the search button, whatever was previously selected becomes deselected.