At the moment, when we press the Insert Row or Insert Column button - we always get the drop-down menu expanded, for selecting what to insert. Instead, I suggest that each button: 1. Remember (and reflect graphically) the last action chosen. 2. When pressed on the icon area, apply the last action. 3. When pressed on the down-facing triangle area, expand the menu. The use case is that many of the actions on that menubutton, when applied, are often applied multiple times; and it would be more convenient if the user did not have to repeat their selection again and again and again.
Workaround A: Use the "Insert cells" dialog instead (Ctrl ++). It remembers the last setting. Workaround B: Enable/Add your favorite single commands in the toolbar. Workaround C: Assign a shortcut to your favorite single command. The requested behavior is implemented e.g. for the "Transformations" and for the "Align objects" button in Draw/Impress. They show the last used action as icon. And that action is performed, when you click on the button. A click on the triangle opens all choices. But these "buttons" are technical different from the "Row" button in Calc. The "Row" button opens a kind of sub-menu whereas the "Align objects" opens a float-able window. I support this request. A similar behavior as with the "float-able window"-buttons could be an improvement.
Repeat insert [Shift+Ctrl+Y]
Customize your UI (.uno:InsertColumnsBefore / .uno:InsertColumnsAfter) Plenty of solutions => NAB/WF. Note: "when we press the Insert Row or Insert Column button" is not specific enough. The toolbar contains the command .uno:ColumnOperations labelled "Column", which expands all column-related actions.
(In reply to m_a_riosv from comment #2) > Repeat insert [Shift+Ctrl+Y] Issues with that: 1. It's a keyboard shortcut, and I'm talking about toolbar buttons for a mouse-focused workflow. Or, you could find it on the menu as Edit > Repeat, but that's again two clicks. 2. More importantly - that's only relevant if you do nothing between insertions; my motivation is when you _do_ do other things between consecutive actions. (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > Note: "when we press the Insert Row or Insert Column button" is not specific > enough. The toolbar contains the command .uno:ColumnOperations labelled > "Column", which expands all column-related actions. Yes, fair enough. > Customize your UI (.uno:InsertColumnsBefore / .uno:InsertColumnsAfter) 1. I asked for the _last_ action to be saved. Not a _specific_ action. I (kinda) like the menubutton - I just want to be able to make it more useful. Adding one, or two, or five, toolbar buttons would just clutter things up. 2. Even if customization worked for me - I'm still interested in the default UI behavior. > Plenty of solutions => NAB/WF. But the problem isn't that I am unable do something. It's that we have an under-utilized button. None of the suggestions solve that.
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #4) > 1. I asked for the _last_ action to be saved. Like on the color menu buttons. Convenient, if you know how it works, otherwise you don't get any indication of what was the last action. If, for example, you delete the row, this might be dangerous.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5) > Like on the color menu buttons. Convenient, if you know how it works, > otherwise you don't get any indication of what was the last action. If, for > example, you delete the row, this might be dangerous. Ah, but you _will_ get an indication - because: 1. We'll change the icon to reflect the last action (and even if the icons for some actions might be a little obscure - the delete icon will be quite distinguishable from the insert icon) 2. We'll add a tooltip which tells you what action it's going to be also, there is undo.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. One proposal was to make the request a pattern and aim for this behavior in general. In fact most of the actions with a menu have it right now. Some may hesitate to retire the redo command or the customization and warn about destructive action (like delete col/row here). This argument was countered with the undo function and the visual feedback since the icon needs to change depending on the default action.
When this is implemented, it will be important to make sure we have icons for most/all the commands on the menu, which right now is the case only for some of the icon themes.