Re: Too many editor tabs?

Hi all,

let me put my two cents ;-)

1) Tabs navigation is ugly and not much functional.
2) Keeping navigational mechanism for opened files conceals a poor
navigation among project files. These could apply to most IDEs I know.

A posible solution:

1) Keep a pool of recently opened files. Those modified will remain on
the pool, of course. Replacement will occur when pool is full and
there are files not viewed for some time.
2) Through a key, key combination or tool bar button, show a dialog
with that pool in first place, followed by all files in projects. A
search mechanism, similar to that one on project view, would be a good
help.

Regards,
--
Lluis Turro
http://www.xmlportal.net
http://www.turro.org


On 3/21/06, Marian Petras <[email protected]> wrote:
> After reading some more comments, I come with yet another vision :-)
>
> Let's get rid of editor tabs completely. Instead, enhance functionality
> of the Navigator panel such that it allows quick navigation between open
> files:
>
> +---------------------------------------------------------------+
> | ConfigDialog.java  |                                          |
> | Main.java //////// |                                          |
> | ValueComparator.ja |                                          |
> | config.xml         |                                          |
> +--------------------+                                          |
> | Main()             |                                          |
> | main(String args[] |                                          |
> | version()          |                                          |
> | toString()         |                                          |
> |                    |                                          |
> .                    .                                          |
> .                    .                                          |
> .                    .                                          |
> |                    |                                          |
> +--------------------+------------------------------------------+
>
> The currently opened file is highlighted in the list of opened files
> (the top left part). Below the list, there is a navigator for the
> selected file.
>
> There is an action for switching between open files (e.g. Ctrl-Tab).
> This action activates the list of opened files. To switch to another
> file, you select its name in the list and press Enter - the file is
> opened in the editor and the editor receives focus.
>
> As the selection changes in the list of open files, contents of the
> navigator updates so that a structure of the currently selected files is
> always displayed.
>
> When in the list of opened files, the user may also press Tab (instead
> of Enter) which leads them to the navigator panel where they can select
> an individual element (method/constructor/etc.). Pressing Enter in the
> list opens the selected file in the editor and jumps to the selected
> element.
>
> During navigation (debugging, Ctrl-clicking, etc.), no extra component
> is opened/displayed. When a not-yet visited file is displayed, its name
> is added to the bottom of the list of opened files, with a special
> markup (slanted, gray, etc.), marking it as "semi-opened". As soon as
> the user leaves the file, its name is removed from the list (if the
> navigation leads to a regular open file) or replaced with a name of
> another semi-opened file.
>
> Semi-opened files can be changed to regular open files quickly with a
> simple action (e.g. by pressing Enter on the name of the semi-opened
> file in the list of files). The only immediate visual change is that the
> file name loses its special markup. When the user navigates out of the
> file, it is not removed from the list of open files.
>
> There is a "history" action (similar to the one known from Firefox, IE
> and other web browsers). When the action is invoked, the list of file
> elements (the bottom left part) disappears, the list of open files (the
> top left part) vertically expands and a list of previously semi-opened
> file is added below the list of regular open files (with a special
> markup). As soon as the user selects one file, the navigator returns to
> the original state, i.e. it displays both a list of files and a list of
> elements.
>
> Marian
>