Enter key behaviour when on a block

[cpcallen]

What should happen when you navigate to a block on the workspace and then press enter?

• Select (for copy/paste)?
  • But at the moment navigating to a block selects it automatically, so this would be a no-op currently.
• "Pick up" the block to begin dragging it?
  • See Make it possible to move blocks on the workspace #106.
• Move cursor to toolbox to replace?
  • This is similar to the behaviour planned for connections in Make placing blocks using the marker more intuitive #102.
• Move to first/only field (possibly on shadow block?) and edit it?
  • This would help address Add affordance to indicate users can navigate within blocks #105.

[rachel-fenichel]

Summary of discussions between micro:bit and Blockly on November 12-13, 2024:

Most locations have multiple possible actions, and the default action would vary significantly by location type. This means that the user needs to already know a lot about the system to predict the behaviour of a default action, and a user who didn't know the system would struggle to understand why Blockly responded the way it did.

Instead, we decided that:

• Rather than try to intelligently guess which action to take, we're going to make Enter open the context menu.
  • Tracking issue: Keyboard navigable context menus #130
• The context menu will contain a list of available actions
• Each action will have a keyboard shortcut noted next to it
  • The shortcut will work from within the context menu, but will also work directly from the workspace at that location.
• Onboarding/tutorials would teach the user that they can press Enter to see available actions, but can also bypass the context menu and use the shortcuts directly.

[rachel-fenichel]

There is a long list of available options on a block. We will likely implement all of these and then experiment and trim down the list to make it manageable.

Possible actions:

• Edit
  • Only visible if the block has a single field
  • Opens that field's editor.
• Replace
  • Opens the toolbox to select a replacement block. Bumps the replaced block out to the workspace, as we do with dragging.
• Disconnect (or a different verb)
  • Disconnect the block and pick it up to start "dragging" with the keyboard.
• Delete
  • Delete the block
• Copy
• Duplicate
• View tooltip
• View help