Expected behavior of Multi-select with extendSelection

[jaknas]

Hi, I wanted to ask about expected behavior of the extendSelection method.

As a live example I will use this code sandbox.

Reproduction steps:

1. Select "Games" with Space
2. Unselect "Games" with Space
3. Press down arrow 2 times, to move to "bootmgr"
4. Hold Shift and press down arrow.

Expected: "bootmgr" and "log.txt" will be selected
Actual: All rows are selected.

More precisely, I think the question is whether the anchorKey should work the same when there are no selected rows. For me, it is a bit confusing to see all rows being selected.

Wanted to know your thoughts about this and to know if there's a particular reason it works like this.

Thanks!

[snowystinger]

I agree, some work should be done here. I think the select + unselect then shift is a bug, if you don't mind opening an issue. This can be observed in our docs as well https://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-spectrum/ListView.html#example

I think the anchorKey should be set to the focusedKey when the shift key is pressed. I'm not sure about non-contiguous multi select, if shift should always add to the current selection. But we can at least address the anchorKey.

We accept PR's if you feel like making one.

[jaknas]

Thanks. I'm not sure If I fully understand:

I'm not sure about non-contiguous multi select, if shift should always add to the current selection.

But we can continue in the issue I created: #4952

[snowystinger]

I'll keep this a separate discussion for now. The general gist is, let's say you have items 1-6.

1. select item 1
2. keyboard navigate to item 4
3. press and hold shift key
4. keyboard navigate to item 5

is the expectation that the items selected would be 1, 4, 5
or is the expectation that the items selected would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I feel like it should be the first option, and I think the recommendation I gave to set the anchorKey when shift is pressed would yield this result. But it's somewhat different to how we currently work, which is closer to the second option

[jaknas]

I'll keep this a separate discussion for now. The general gist is, let's say you have items 1-6.

1. select item 1

2. keyboard navigate to item 4

3. press and hold shift key

4. keyboard navigate to item 5

is the expectation that the items selected would be 1, 4, 5

or is the expectation that the items selected would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I feel like it should be the first option, and I think the recommendation I gave to set the anchorKey when shift is pressed would yield this result. But it's somewhat different to how we currently work, which is closer to the second option

Oh I get it now. I agree that first option makes the most sense. TBH I got accustomed to the second option and I learned to do a workaround to reset the anchorKey, if I want to do non contiguous selection.

I feel like the first one seems the easiest to understand w.r.t how it works