Re: [platform-ui-dev] RE: UI Status followup

[Michael Van Meekeren <Michael_Van_Meekeren@xxxxxxxxxx>]

There has been some progress on this
for example, we now support opening the preference dialog to a page with
some configurability.  From inside Eclipse type Ctrl+Shift+L (this
opens the popup showing current key bindings available), then select an
item (not required) in the list and press Ctrl+Shift+L again and you are
taken directly to the key bindings preference page with the selected key
chosen to be viewed/edited.

/michael

Randy Hudson <hudsonr@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/18/2004 04:27 PM

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Subject	Re: [platform-ui-dev] RE: UI Status followup

My main complaint about the preference dialog is that I have to use it.
 For example, for editor quick-diff settings, I should be able to
right-click on the java editor's ruler, select "Quick Diff..."
and edit preferences *only* for quick diffs.  If the use of the global
prefrence dialog were discouraged, the complexity/scalability wouldn't
be so important.  I thought this was a goal of the preference swat
team. 

-Randy Hudson

"Ed Burnette" <Ed.Burnette@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/18/2004 03:53 PM

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Subject	[platform-ui-dev] RE: UI Status followup

Michael suggested I follow up here. The prototype looks pretty busy to
me with navigation across the top, down the left side, and in the content
area in the form of tabs.

It's always struck me as a usability problem that some preferences pages
are heavily into tabs and some aren't and some use a combination of tab
pages and tree nodes on the left. I know that different components have
different numbers of preferences but this is pretty confusing to even experienced
users. If the preferences dynamic team can straighten all that out it would
be very welcome.

Two interesting models that I think demonstrate some fresh, good ideas
for preferences UI are the Options dialog in Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/firefox)
and both the main interface and options dialog of the MySQL Administrator
(http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/administrator).

I suggest a data-driven approach. You already have the concept of field
editors and preference categories. Go a bit further, and instead of having
preference page designers painstakingly build up an SWT composite by hand,
let us give the preferences UI engine enough info so it could generate
the whole interface on the fly

For example, look at the Workbench > Search preferences. You have some
boolean options, you have a color option, you have a text option that can
be disabled, and you have an option that takes a value out of a list. This
could all be described in some simple XML. With a few exceptions I'll bet
almost all the preferences could be handled that way.

You list height/width problems as an issue - dynamically generating the
pages would help address that wouldn't it? There's a bugzilla open for
filtering/searching, and having metadata for all the preferences would
help that too. It would help capabilities as individual options could be
visible or hidden based on the capabilities, not just whole preference
pages. It would help making the presentation of the preferences common
across all plug-ins (rather than everybody doing their own rendering as
currently). It would eventually allow alternate UI presentations for the
preferences (future versions could render it differently, and some RCP
apps might prefer tree representions, some might want to do the whole thing
in Swing, and some might want a long scrollable list, etc.).

Also it would reduce developer time trying to squeeze in an option in a
preference page here or there, and reduce the opportunities for error cutting
and pasting all the boilerplate get/set/default code that's currently needed.
That's probably why many preferences that exist in the code aren't surfaced
in the UI; it's too much of a pain.

________________________________

                From: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Van Meekeren
                Sent: Thursday,
November 18, 2004 10:50 AM
                To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
                Subject: [eclipse-dev]
UI Status followup
                
                

                
                As a followup to
the status note about preferences, a sample image has been linked to the
Preferences Dynamic team page. 
                http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-ui-home/R3_1/dynamic_teams/dynamic_teams.html#preferences
                
                click here to go
directly to it, note that it is just a prototype: 
                http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-ui-home/R3_1/dynamic_teams/pref_snapshot.PNG
                
                
                /michael

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