Cannot submit form if Person requires clarifying without doing a non-obvious no-op

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical)]

This is about the "confirm the person you meant" widget used in the Assign To (+editstatus) and Subscribe Someone Else forms, amongst others.

After entering a name into the field (e.g. "van de streek") and submitting the form, you're returned to the form and given a drop-down list box of the possible completions.

ONE IS SELECTED ALREADY. In this case, Martin Van De Streek, which is who I wanted.

So I just submit the form again, and am told that an error occurs, and given exactly the same screen again.

To actually get the form to submit, I have to click on the drop-down list box, and then click on the option that's ALREADY SELECTED.

Only then does the box to the left change to Martijn's e-mail address, and allow the form to submit.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

This is a serious UI problem.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

Matthew, can you design a form layout that doesn't have the confusing behaviour that Scott is pointing out? It's already been pointed out again by Martin in bug 36880.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

This is actually an issue in the popup widget. I need to think about the best way to solve it for when we have multiple results, in particular.

[Eleanor Berger (intellectronica)]

Implementing https://blueprints.launchpad.net/launchpad/+spec/suggestion-search-control is one way to overcome this problem.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The ajax person picker solved this.

[Guilherme Salgado (salgado)]

I don't see how the ajax picker would solve this, and as reported on bug 487325, it doesn't seem to be fixed.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The javascript for selecting the user in the menu was broken, so the proposed person was not submitted.