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


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>
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11/18/2004 04:27 PM

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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>
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11/18/2004 03:53 PM

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[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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