How about being able to define new variables from within other action steps. So your workflow could look like:
1. New Action (eg, Ini File Iterator)
2. In Variable drop down box, select hypothetical “New variable…” entry
3. A window pops up to let you name the new variable
…
It would be a bit smoother than having to back out of the new step to go and define a (temporary!) variable…
Steve
noted.
in free text fields you can press F3 to bring up the declare variables dialog - but that doesn’t help with the combo boxes of variables.
.t8
Ah, interesting, that’s actually pretty useful as long as there’s a free text field somewhere on the page.
Why not allow F3 to operate anywhere in an action step, rather than just on free text fields?
Steve
Because a variable combo may or may not be a variable one - there’s nothing “special” about it to indicate that it holds a list of variables. F2 and F3 work in any text box or memo. We could do something for actions written with ActionStudio as there is a special type of combobox that auto loads variables and we can treat them in a special way, but probably only about 20% of actions are current written with ActionStudio…
Posted By Tate Needham on 15 Nov 2006 9:52 PM
Because a variable combo may or may not be a variable one - there's nothing "special" about it to indicate that it holds a list of variables. F2 and F3 work in *any* text box or memo. We could do something for actions written with ActionStudio as there is a special type of combobox that auto loads variables and we can treat them in a special way, but probably only about 20% of actions are current written with ActionStudio...
Because a variable combo may or may not be a variable one - there's nothing "special" about it to indicate that it holds a list of variables. F2 and F3 work in *any* text box or memo. We could do something for actions written with ActionStudio as there is a special type of combobox that auto loads variables and we can treat them in a special way, but probably only about 20% of actions are current written with ActionStudio...
I'm not really sure I get you. For me, it's very useful being able to declare variables from within an action regardless of whether there is a specific field there or not. It's because of the modality of the action window - it blocks access to anything else you might want to do. Being able to get around that by pressing F3 is great - I'm already using that very frequently.
There is a slight refresh bug though: when you declare a new variable that way it doesn't appear in any variable drop down boxes until you close the action window and reload. It also doesn't appear on the project tab of the main window until you refresh.
Steve
PS I didn't know about F2 until then! Very handy for setting up lists of NL/CR separated values...
I'm not really sure I get you.
Sorry... what I was trying to say is that it's mainly a technical problem... it is a good suggestion and something we already actually have on the enhancements list for R&D.