Tim Elmore

The way the Tracks Pane works right now, a left-click is required, and the mouse cursor must be over the control to change it. In the Tracks Pane, if you forget to click the control you want to change, and you hover the mouse over it and move the mouse wheel, nothing will happen. But at least it doesn't change the wrong control.

Some people will prefer to just move the mouse over the control and not have to left-click it before using the mouse wheel. Maybe the best thing to do is make this the default for both the Tracks Pane and Console Pane, and add a settable option to require a left-click first. The Tracks Pane and Console Pane would then be consistent. Right now, a left-click is required in the Tracks Pane, but not in the Console Pane.

Background: CbB version 2020.05 made the mouse wheel less prone to accidentally adjusting control settings if the user pauses during a vertical scroll with the mouse wheel. If the user pauses briefly during scrolling, there is a delay before the next mouse movement is treated as a new operation. Version 2020.05 increased this delay from 0.5 second to one second.

Problem: This helps, but I still inadvertently change a control value if I start scrolling while I happen to be hovering over a control. Even though I am very careful about this, I sometimes accidentally bump the sensitive mouse wheel as I take hold of the mouse to scroll the pane. The constant necessity for being really careful is a distraction.

Solution: The Tracks Pane already has a really nice way to handle the mouse wheel. To change a Tracks Pane control setting, you left-click the control first. This selects the control, indicated by putting thin brackets around the control (see attached figure). The mouse wheel can then be used to change the setting. If a control is not selected, there is no danger of an inadvertent change. A control can be deselected by clicking a blank area of the Tracks Pane. This completely prevents unintended changes in settings when moving the mouse and scrolling around the Tracks Pane.

Oddly, although the Console Pane allows the user to select a control by left-clicking it, this seems to have no effect on the behavior of the control, unlike in the Tracks Pane. A Console Pane control can be changed using the mouse wheel even though the control is not selected. In the attached figure, I had inadvertently moved the Pan control in the Console Pane from the centered position.

If the Console Pane were to treat control selection the same as the Tracks Panel (left-click before allowing mouse wheel to change a setting), it would completely eliminate inadvertent control changes in the Console Pane when using the mouse wheel.