Thanks janko Give me another engineer and we redo completely the browsers :) Stef
Dear Pharoers,
I just finished syncing new Aida from VW on new Pharo 1.1 and during that I collect few impressions and also suggestions, how to proceed. Please find them as a kind of "concrete congratulation" to your work :)
Impressions: ===========
- design is nice and polished, default font looks professional - responsiveness and speed of browsing seems now fast enough - very nice and simple Word menu - nicely enhanced Inspector - nice Google-like search in browser - Aida is among few projects on DEVImageWorkspace, thanks guys! - Settings browser is a real progress forward, nicely organized, but with still too much choices. I suppose many settings are never or really rarely used, those should be put outside this Settings browser. - Help system also looks very promising! With an introduction of context help also (like ? icons elsewhere) we can come close to ideal help. Of course we need also good docs writers to write a really good help, nicely balanced between a newcomer than expert viewpoint.
Suggestions: ===========
- some Start button? Maybe named World? Not just ProfStef's 'go evaluation' (which is much better than nothing of course). At least a right click to come to a Word menu must be explained somewhere at the start, otherwise one is lost how to proceed.
- window buttons on Linux and Windows are on the wrong side. This is very dangerous thing, user can quickly make en error and accidentialy close a window. In any case it is very very annoying! A real showstopper for me!
- System browser has no package view, just categories. This is confusing to newcomers, what are packages, what categories? Having packages also in a category view will be more understandable.
- back button in browser, like on web browsers!
- why hierarchy button opens a new browser, why rather not toggle hierarchy/category view in the same window?
- in general: avoid opening new windows, rather "reuse" the same one. This is the current usability trend elsewhere.
- What about introducing tabs in browser? This is very very useful and handy, mostly because we are used of tabs from web browsers.
- Browser opens just too small size. It should open in a size recomendable for further development (like for encouraging the 10 lines per method rule)
- What if we introduce "add class", "add method" etc. dialogs in menu too? Yes yes I know, but look from a newcomer perspective..
- Search line on the top of browser should have a 'Search:' at the start, to find it easily with an eye. What if it ignore the upper/lowercase by default. Users are used of ignore-case search from elsewhere, like Google.
- Inspector and explorer still two different but very similar things. Inspector is now much better than before, having tree view of inspected object do we still need to add confusion with additional explorer?
- Help needs a search field. API docs hierarchy is quite deep and without a search near to unusable. Also, in a System browser there need to be a link to the corresponding help text. And vice versa, link to the class in browser from help.
- Still no breakpoints! Please introduce them, Squeak/Pharo seems nowadays the only Smalltalk without breakpoints!
- why isn't a class comment visible below the class definition in the same pane, as was once?
- Undocumented classes should have a special mark to encourage commenting them. Maybe that question mark button (?) in red color?
- Popup menu in method pane is too large, some choices not really so important to be there (like paste..., explore it, do again(redo?) ) - Popup menu: choices find, find again, extended search should be joined in one find... - Popup menu: set breakpoint, clear breakpoint
Best regards Janko
-- Janko Mivšek Svetovalec za informatiko Eranova d.o.o. Ljubljana, Slovenija www.eranova.si tel: 01 514 22 55 faks: 01 514 22 56 gsm: 031 674 565
_______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project