Tabbed Browsers and invisible Radio Buttons...

[jtuchel]

Hi,

while I was writing my feedback on the Code Completion Goodie, I remembered there is one thing I wanted to draw your attention to for a while now but always forgot to do so:

In the standard size the Browsers open up in, you can hardly see the Radio Buttons for "Private" and "Class" beneath the Selection Panes. In some cases, it is even impossible to select "Class" without resizing the Browser window, because not enough of the radio button is visible on the screen. In such cases, I wish back my old push button with altering labels which I really found not to be intuitive at all.

I am not really sure what I'd like to have alternatively, because arranging the two options vertically would mean taking way too much space. A Drop-Down-List would look ugly. Dolphin uses vertical Tabs, which I also don't consider a great idea. Maybe somebody has a better idea, but I think it needs to be changed. I personally never switch to "Private" at the classes/hierarchy pane and would possibly have problems explaining what a Private subclassing would be good for anyways, so this switching option is probably not important enougfh to even remain in such a prominent position in the window, but the Instance/Class switcher is a completely different story.

The right place for Instance/Class would be where Public/Private/All are at the moment, but as long as we have private methods in VAST, this option is needed as well. Maybe that selection should move to the the "Edit" or a new "View" menu, in which the Public/Private Hierarchy optioon could also reside.

Any thoughts?

Joachim

[tc]

Hello,

In the standard size the Browsers open up in, you can hardly see the Radio Buttons for "Private" and "Class" beneath the Selection Panes. In some cases, it is even impossible to select "Class" without resizing the Browser window

My thoughts are this is part of the setup/configuration via Transript -> Options -> Open Preferences Window. In there, window sizes and widget percentages can be adjusted. Since VA ST is run on different screen sizes, I would prefer not to set a screen size. The user can adjust it after installation.

However, we're always open to a better way and will consider your post.

--tc

[jtuchel]

TC,

of course I wasn't asking for another standard size of Browser windows, but for better ways to offer the selection between class and instance methods. But since the Browsers open too small for the "Class" Button to be visible or even clickable, the option of switching to see class methods is somehow hidden to an occasional new user of VA Smalltalk.
I know my list of alternative approaches is both short and useless, so I am not in a position to shout and blame anybody, I just wanted to hint you to the fact that the way it is right now can be annoying to seasoned users and a real problem for new users.

Joachim

[jtuchel]

TC,

Thinking about this a little, I came to a possible solution and would like to hear what you and others think.

The selection between class and instance not only affects the list of methods, but also the list of categories, so putting both the categories list and the methods list into the notebook and put the class/instance switcher below both of them would give it at least the space of two list boxes worth of horizontal pixels, so that both selections should be both readable and clickable in almost every situation.

Only if the browser is so small that you can neither read the category names, nor the method names, the radio buttons would also be unusable. Would this improve the situation?

In fact, I would even go so far to use "Instance" and "Class" as Tabs and put the Private/Public/All selection either beneath the two lists or regard it as a filter that's configured elsewhere...

But even that would not be sufficient, because the selection between Instance and Class influences the behaviour of the context menu in the source code pane, especially for refactorings when the MEDRBExtensions are loaded (example: "create accessors" respects the class/instance setting, which is stupid anyways in the light of the fact that it says "Selection..." but doesn't react accordingly, but that's another topic...)

Joachim