Better MultiValueEdit Control

From our point of view, the current MultiValueEdit-Control (webCube and winCube) can be improved significantly when used in search dialoges. When multiple numbers are entered, it works fine, but in case only a single value is required for a specific search, the field is not very user friendly. Whenever you start typing, the pop up window appears immediately that forces you to hit enter three times instead of once to perform the search (this is best case szenario, often the mouse is used to confirm the value and the popup which increases the time to enter the value dramatically) . In addition, when the user wants to enter the next search value, the previous value can neither be overwritten nor removed by using 'del' or 'backspace' on the keyboard. The pop up window has to be opened and the previous value be removed manually using the mouse.

We suggest to improve this control so that single values can be entered without the popup and that it is possible to remove / overwrite previous values easily.

Situation @ SEW:

Please find attached a screenshot of our most frequently used search dialog. Currently, all controls are single value, but users are asking more and more for the option to enter multi values in the existing fields. We have been considering two solutions for this request:

1. We change all controls to multivalue edit controls. This would significantly worsen the usability for all search requests that require only one value.

2. We add an additional multivalue edit control for each relevant descriptor. This would almost double the amout of search fields on the dialog, impairing the clarity of the dialog far too much.

We are currently considering to add checkboxes the user can use to switch between single and multi edit controls, but this also seems to be very suboptimal solution.