Automagic Forum

Many triggers have a line for apps on their configuration page. It is intuitive that the default is something like *.* (matches all apps) in the case where the user doesn't specify anything on the app line. After all the whole point of using the trigger in the first place is to match against something (all apps, some apps, or one app). The user can save the trigger with a blank apps specification and no warning or error is generated. Having developed software for 30+ years this is a UI design bug IMHO. If something needs to be specified on the apps line then it should not be possible to save the trigger without that requirement having been met. At the very least alert the user to the problem. I thrashed around for many hours wondering why triggers weren't working if they matched all apps. Well they didn't. There is no intuitive default. If this UI bug isn't going to be fixed I would recommend that at a minimum the help text be modified to clarify this. Thanks.

Hi,

I understand your point but I thought that it was clear that leaving the field blank does not match anything. The help pages sometimes mention that glob patterns can be used to match all apps but maybe it was missing in this particular trigger. Which trigger did you use?
I'm not a big fan of showing error messages when saving triggers since you might want to leave the UI temporarily in an inconsistent state and warning dialogs are usually ignored when shown often. Maybe showing a hint like 'Please select package' when the field is empty would help and is not intrusive.

Regards,
Martin