Re: [Usability]Looking for UI ideas for a gnome IDE

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel liebesgedichte net>]

What about a sidepane-treeview instead of tabs? It could make opening
the files you want very simply (by providing a tree of documents which
belong to your project) or show all currently loaded windows in a
special category, however. When I use a tabbed editor I notice that it
becomes less and less usefull for me the more files I have open so I
would prefer a more general way to quickly switch between documents and
a sidepane listing all of them seems to be more appropriate to me.
Also you could have a "general" toolbar that contains everything that
belongs to the entire project and below this a module-specific toolbar
(or however you want to call it). This module-specific toolbar would
then of course constantly switch depending on the currently active
document. 
Hmm, maybe it would even be a good idea to split the main and "content"
window like in Delphi (or Gimp). Not thousands of windows but one small
main project window from where you control your project and at least one
document window with such a side pane and a module-specific, flexible
toolbar. This would make it easier to open new document windows (for
copy and paste, comparisions, etc). It should be made easy of course to
open a document in a new window, similar to how Nautilus works (notice
that Nautilus even changes the toolbar depending on the content).
Indeed, I Nautilus window with open treeview seems to be quite close to
what I'm talking about. The treeview allows to quickly select the
content (document) you want to view/edit and the toolbar adjusts to the
loaded document if appropriate. 
Just some brainstorming, maybe it inspires you to something. ;)

- Daniel


On Sat, 2002-08-31 at 00:58, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm helping with a rewrite of hIDE the IDE for Haskell.
> 
> http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d99josve/hide/
> 
> This time it will have a nice UI, oh yes. :-)
> 
> So I'm looking for some ideas for the overall structure of the UI.
> 
> One key feature that makes it different from other IDE's I've seen is
> that it will integrate much more than just editor pages and a couple
> other windows like a project management window (it's completely
> extensable using Haskell as the embeded language). There will be
> documentation pages, Todo list, build results, search results, call
> graphs etc.
> 
> I wanted a common way for the user to handle all these pages. I was
> thinking of allowing the user to have a mix of top level windows and
> pages in a tabbed notebook. So that for example the user may arrange
> many editor or html documentation pages to be in a tabbed notebook. But
> the todo list or project management page are seperate top level windows
> so thay can see that at the same time as the other windows.
> 
> Anjuta1 has this kind of scheme (albeit it's mostly for editor pages),
> as well as allowing docked windows (which I've never found work well
> from a UI perspective).
> 
> Now my problem is where do I put the menu toolbar items that are
> specific to a particular page? 
> 
> I could put them inside the notebook pages, but this seems a bit odd -
> I've never seen this done before. 
> 
> I could try to put them all in the top window's toolbar and disable /
> hide them when they are innapropriate. This does't feel nice either, as
> there may be lots and hiding is generally bad UI design. It also doesn't
> work well with multiple top level windows as the stuff enabled / visible
> would depend on the currently selected window - which is horrible and
> highly dependant on the way the WM works.
> 
> This wouldn't be so bad if there were only one notebook, ie if there was
> only one top level window like in most editors eg gedit, rather in the
> Delphi / Kylix style. Kylix uses a separate top level menu / toolbar
> window: http://www.drbob42.com/gif/Kylixongnome2full.jpg
> 
> So what to do? All suggestions welcome.
> 
> BTW if I've not explained myself very well I can post some glade files
> or screenshots.
> 
> Duncan
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> Usability gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
>