MultiCombo bug: Pressing Tab closes the dropdown

At http://docs.webix.com/samples/60_pro/02_form/06_multicombo.html, if you type “full” then press Tab, the whole dropdown disappears. Same if you type “full”, then press down arrow to select “Full Metal Jacket”, then press Tab.

Better UX:

  • Always select the first entry among those in the dropdown that match the input text. Pressing Tab will place the selected entry from the dropdown in the input. Up/Down arrows move selection among the entries in the dropdown. This is what Vanilla does and you can see it in the Tags input when you create a new discussion here in this forum. Bootstrap Typeahead and Pinboard.in use the same UX for tagging. I’ve used these for years and found them very effective. Select2 has an open issue to implement this as well.

  • Focus on the first option that matches the input, just like StackOverflow does when you edit the tags on a question. I don’t favor this approach, but it’s still better than hiding the entire dropdown when pressing tab.

Thank you for sharing your ideas. We really appreciate you helping us improve our library.

We will check whether Tab processing can be changed.

Was struggling with the same issue and came across this post. Agree 100% with dandv. This is a big deal when using the control.

I might suggest that enter should be supported as well as tab.

See how ExtJS does it as a good example:

http://dev.sencha.com/extjs/5.0.0/examples/kitchensink/#form-tag

Note when pressing enter, it “pins” the first value that matches AND keeps the focus in the combo so that the user can immediately begin typing another selection. When pressing tab, it “pins” the first value and then moves the focus to the next control. Up/Down arrows work as dandv suggested.

Behavior was updated in Webix 2.4.7