JDAT-1222: Blinking/tabbing between images

[pllim]

Blink one or more images in the same viewer.

https://jira.stsci.edu/browse/JDAT-1222

Follow-up of #429

• Note from @pllim: Where will the keyboard magic be documented? For instance, I wouldn't know pressing b will blink unless I watch that video. -- Now a tooltip
• Also, will b be able to blink tabs too? Deferred to JDAT-1392: Enable tabbing of tiled images #528

[astrofrog]

For now, I suggest the following approach - add a new 'blinking' CheckableTool which once enabled will enable the 'b' keyboard shortcut and also show a tooltip that tells the user they can press b to blink. The main difficulty is going to be to pick an icon!

An alternative is to implement a Tool (non-checkable) that when clicked will blink the images once, and again could have a tooltip that tells the user they can also press b to blink (anytime, not just when the tool is checked).

In the first case the only way to blink is to press b (when the tool is enabled) and in the second case the user can either click the tool or press b.

I don't have a strong preference - both are relatively easy to implement.

[pllim]

UI/UX part of this ticket has been superseded by #604 . The scope of this issue is now strictly to document b.

[pllim]

What is the difference between "checkable" and "non-checkable" tools?

How about this? Click to continuously blink all active images every N seconds (we can hardcode N for now) and click again to stop. Mouseover to tell people that "b" does manual blinking too.

[astrofrog]

A checkable tool is like pan and zoom or the selection tools - once enable you can do something with e.g. the cursor or keyboard. A non-checkable tool is like the home icon - it does an action as you press it and then returns to not being selected. Does this make sense? (how to write these is documented here)

As I mentioned yesterday, continuously blinking the images requires some kind of threading because we need to blink while also checking for click events to make sure you can stop the tool (hence my alternative suggestions above).

[pllim]

some kind of threading

I thought we were told not to worry about threading but I guess blocking click event to stop blinking is a deal breaker. 😆

[pllim]

An alternative is to implement a Tool (non-checkable) that when clicked will blink the images once, and again could have a tooltip that tells the user they can also press b to blink (anytime, not just when the tool is checked).

I slightly prefer this one. I'll give that a stab today.

[astrofrog]

Sounds good! Let me know if you have any questions!