When looking at a record in Salesforce, have you ever thought to yourself, "Why isn't there an easy way to just edit one or two fields quickly, without clicking the Edit button?" Well, wonder no more. We just completed our first full round of usability testing on a new feature being developed - Inline Editing - and so far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. See the screenshot below for a quick look.

We received some great feedback from usability participants last week, but I'm interested in getting even more ideas and suggestions. While I can't promise that every suggestion will be implemented, I can promise that each one will be reviewed thoroughly to give you the best product possible.

So, if you have a spare moment, check out the prototype here, kick the tires a bit, and tell me what you think by posting a comment below. Cheers everyone - Eric

P.S. It's a prototype, so it's not perfect (for example, you should use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, the multi-select picklist is....um....temperamental, etc.), but hopefully you can get a good feel for the behaviour clicking around the page. For starters, check out...

• Easy-to-Understand Editability Indicators - simply hover over a field's value to see whether it's editable. Editable fields change color and display a pencil, uneditable fields simply display a lock.
• Single-Click-to-Edit - clicking once (not double-clicking) on a field's value will turn on "edit mode" for that field. Click off the field, and it will automatically confirm your change (if a change was actually made to the value in the field).
• Text Auto-Select - for text and textarea fields, clicking on the field to edit it will automatically select the text for you, so you don't need to highlight it yourself. Just click once and start typing your new value.
• Single Undo - unlike other inline edit features on the market, Salesforce's implementation gives you the ability to undo a single change without canceling every change on the page. If you edit three fields, then change your mind about one, simply click the "undo" icon for the field you want to revert, then click Save (or press Enter) to commit the other two changes.
• Key Stroke Detection - pressing either the Enter or Esc key when you're in an editable field will either confirm or cancel that single change, respectively. Pressing Enter or Esc when you're not in an editable field will commit or cancel all your changes, respectively. So, if you just want to edit a single field and save the change, click the field, make your edit, then press Enter twice (once to confirm the single change, then again to save the entire record).
• Dependent Picklist Presentation - all field dependencies are shown as a group in an overlay, so even if you have dependent picklists that are separated on the page, they'll show up together whenever you try to edit one. (Click either the "Industry" or "Type" fields to see what I mean.)
• Click-Away Detection - changing a value and then trying to click a hyperlink on the page to navigate away from it displays a warning that you've made changes that haven't been saved. (Note in the prototype, it only works for the links in the detail area of the page, but would normally be everywhere.)
• Compound Fields - fields that display one way on the detail page, and another on the edit page (such as addresses, first and last names, and multi-select picklists) will show as an overlay in the middle of the window in edit mode. When changes are made, only the changed portions of the concatenated fields will display as changed. Go ahead and try it by changing only one portion of an address field.