Re: Too many editor tabs?

Hi Marian,

what about following GUI:

------------------------------------------------------------------
|    A   x |    B   x |         |        |                       |
------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                                                                |
------------------------------------------------------------------
| ^  C   x | ^  D   x |         |        |                     X |
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Permanent Area":
----------------
Top of the editor tab (area with A, B) - like what we have today.
"Temp Area":
------------
Bottom of the editor area: temporarily opened files by:
a. debugger
b. code browsing (Ctrl-click)
c. search (in files) and find usages

In the Temp Area you have tabs enhanced with up arrow ^ which would move 
the file to the permanent area. Moving up can be also achieved by e.g. 
editing the file (?).

Also there is X in the permanent area closing all temporarily opened tabs.

The temp area can have tabs (to keep it consistent with the rest of the 
GUI ?) or it can be some history browsing GUI element.

Of course there might be an option to enable/disable this sort of thing ;-))

What do you (and the others) think? Haven't heard from our GUI expert 
group yet ... Or is it forbidden for developers to have an opinion about 
the GUI usability?

David

Marian Petras wrote:
> I have read the other comments and I think that the following mechanism 
> could work.
> 
> 1) There is not a special mode (frame) but a special "navigation tab" 
> for files opened just for browsing/navigation. The navigation tab is 
> opened when a navigation action (Ctrl+click, debugger action, etc.) 
> leads to a file not currently opened in the current tabs. When another 
> such file is to be opened, content of the navigation tab is replaced 
> with that file and the old content is lost.
> 
> 2) The navigation tab keeps history of files that are open in it. It 
> allows quick navigation to files which have been open during navigation 
> but are not currently visible.
> 
> 3) The navigation tab has a special action which "releases" the 
> currently displayed file - it opens it in a "normal" tab. If the 
> currently displayed file is the only file in the navigation tab, the tab 
> simply becomes a "normal" tab.
> 
> 4) Modification of a file opened in the navigation tab invokes 
> auto-release of the file, i.e. the "release" action described in 
> paragraph 3) is performed automatically.
> 
> Please send your answers to <[email protected]>. Thanks.
> 
> Marian