Clicking away from a highlighted circuit component doesn't always unhighlight that component

[matthew-blackman]

During user interviews for PhET Studio, @LindaStegemann and I observed a user who had clicked on a circuit component and highlighted it (yellow outline), and then was trying to click away to unhighlight it but was not able to (it was stuck in the highlighted state). We observed this for both wires and battery components. Ultimately, they were able to unhighlight the circuit component by clicking on the circuit toolbox.

This seems like an annoying issue, particularly with Studio saving the highlighted state. @samreid I recall this issue coming up before and being worked on, but couldn't find the paper trail to link here. Do you remember which issue it was?

[samreid]

In the latest PhET version which is 1.3.15 at https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/circuit-construction-kit-dc/latest/circuit-construction-kit-dc_all.html, dragging out a circuit element, clicking to highlight, then clicking away hides the highlight.

But I'm not surprised to hear this is fragile, and it may have been put in a buggy corner-case state. What version was this problem exhibited on? Is it easy to reproduce the problem?

We most recently discussed highlights in
#975 (comment)

[matthew-blackman]

Okay, I found a way to reliably reproduce this on my end:

1. Go to CCK: DC
2. Go to the Lab screen
3. Drag out a battery and highlight it
4. Click on the Advanced accordion box

The battery should stay highlighted, and now clicking off of it won't unhighlight it. It can be unhighlighted by clicking in the circuit toolbox, but now this same behavior will happen to new components as well. @samreid can you reproduce this?

[matthew-blackman]

This also happens about 50% of the time that I build a circuit with an open switch and then close/highlight the switch when it is unhighlighted:

[matthew-blackman]

2/25 - @kathy-phet confirmed that this issue is a high priority given the value of CCK for Studio customization, and the fact that this bug leads to the user getting "stuck" without being able to reset the highlight behavior.

@samreid would you like to collaborate on this?

[Matthew-Moore240]

This issue seems to be fixed in dev.1

[zepumph]

For QA:

We are going to take another dev version from main. I know QA verified above, but I'd love another sanity check on the next version coming up:

To test:

1. Lab screen
2. drag out a circuit element
3. Highlight it (yellow highlight)
4. You cannot unhighlight it.

Note this is reproducible in https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/circuit-construction-kit-dc/latest/circuit-construction-kit-dc_all.html

[KatieWoe]

Looks good