PageListSelect issue

[Soma]

I recently noticed, when using PageListSelect, and I select a page, how can I remove that again, so it's empty again?

[ryan]

For the page that's selected, the 'select' link is replaced by 'unselect'. When you click unselect, it will make it unselected.

[Soma]

Aaaaaaah, but that's cumbersome. Why is it like this? Would it be possible to have a remove button beneath the add button?

[ryan]

In response to the above, and your previous message: One thing to note about PageListSelect (and PageListSelectMultiple) is that they are using the ProcessPageList. We don't have a dedicated Inputfield type for selecting a hierarchy of pages, so we're piggybacking onto PageList instead. It was originally only designed for PageList and required single selection (like parent page). In the future I'd like to build a dedicated Inputfield type that could be customized and tailored according to individual needs. But this was one of the more expensive things to develop and I built it the best way that I could afford to. It's not perfect, but I think it's a good compromise and the the best I could do with the resources I have. Since I generally have to dedicate my  resources to those that will ultimately be used by my clients, there are some aspects in PW (like this inputfield) that are tailored more towards myself and my clients more so than the broader audience. In my case, I needed to make sure my clients unselects were purposeful rather than accidental. So by intention it takes the same exact effort to select a page as it does to unselect one. And there is no template selection support in the PageListSelects because it's a rare need that doesn't exist in my own projects, it's not part of PageList, and I couldn't yet justify the cost in time it would take to add it. I agree it would be better to provide more options for all these things in the future, and as PW's audience grows I'll be able to rethink some of these things and put more resources towards them. But until that time comes I'm really focused on making the "big picture"–the foundation and core of ProcessWire–as strong and powerful as possible, and for as broad of an audience as possible. We'll get to the finer details of lesser used components with time. I'd eventually like to split off the PageList Inputfields from the PageList so that the Inputfields can be customized much more, and we'll probably be looking at that in 2.4 (if someone doesn't build one before that).

[Soma]

Thanks Ryan for your response and talking about how things came to be in the context.

I respect that and understand that your time is limited here and currently are focusing on other more important things.

Don't take this personally or anything. I'm just expressing my experience without having any context of knowing how things came to be or what you're thoughts are on certain things. Sometimes these are really minor things.

Regarding this Inputfields and the Page list tree functions and usability behaviors, I think everybody has different expectations how something should or shouldn't work and you've done an amazing job on this, but still as you said yourself there's always room to improve things.

As for the Page reference field: I think this is one of the features which I really enjoy having in PW, and I'm using it a lot for different things. It's a really strong feature, very useful and flexible. I go as far as saying this very feature, is one why I finally chosen/love PW. I think I'm not the only one here.

So I think if these page fieldtype/inputfields will become even stronger and get more love in the future it's will be awesome. I understand that it serves for what you and your client need/needed and having it to build on it, is such a great thing already.

I would love to help you out on this, I would just start right now, but I fear my knowledge of the system is yet not enough. Some help and more time getting familiar with the core would be neccessary.  Instead of saying "I want this or that is not good" I would get my hands dirty with this and help improve it.

Thanks Ryan again, for this amazing CMS/CMF.

[ryan]

Thanks Soma. I didn't realize you had found these so useful. Please continue to point out stuff like this, as it helps us to make it better. I just wanted to explain why this part may still have some rough edges. This will continue to improve with time, for sure. I think that enforcing the template selection won't be too difficult. Though I don't think we'll be able to support the 'custom code' with the InputfieldPageSelects, as there's just too many possibilities there for a field with hierarchy. For the page removal, we could have it drill down to the selected page automatically so that the 'unselect' link is visible when you open the field. Could also just have it as a "remove" link next to the selected item, though may have to keep a JS confirm box on that to prevent accidents. I find myself doing something or another with the PageList every couple weeks here, so will definitely keep thinking about implementation possibilities and experiment with these things.

[Michael Atul Kumar]

Hello,

are there any news on this topic? I actually find it very cumbersome as well. Especially if the current selected page is somewhere deep hidden in the hierarchy.

The best way to unselect in that case is to: open the field, select the next given page (which closes the field again), open the field again, unselect the given page. Pretty cumbersome