Tools Menu Potential Enhancement

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bhall2001
Posts: 107
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 3:54 pm
Location: Manchester, NH

Tools Menu Potential Enhancement

Post by bhall2001 » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:11 am

I use a plugin for my IDE environment that tweaks the Tools' menu UX a bit. I'm curious if my enhancements might have enough interest that I should look at an enhancement request for the IDE. Here's the story...

The Project Browser, Extension Manager and Extension Builder menu's (and underlying menu code) treat these windows as palette windows. The windows are not implemented as palettes nor should they be. However, the UX with opening/closing the window is a little off, especially if these windows end up behind other window)(s) and get lost on the screen (happens to me all the time).

As an example, let's assume the Project Browser window ends up behind another window (since it's not a palette). The checkmark in the Tools menu correctly indicates the window is open. However, there is no way to easily access this window without either moving things around until you locate the window, or selecting the Project Browser menu in the Tools menu twice (once to close the window, once to open).

The attached plugin modifies how the Tools menu works just a bit to give a better UX (IMHO). Also, the Project Browser and Extension Builder I use quite often. So, I've added a short cut key combo to access these windows. NOTE: Using the key combo always results in the window being opened and coming to the front.

NOTE: in LC 7.x the project browser window was not treated as a palette which is my inspiration for my plugin.

The attached stack I use on 9DPx series and 8.1.x series. Install it into your plugins folder and set to run when the IDE launches.

Please post feedback here. I think this is a nice (and very easy) enhancement to the IDE but I'd love to hear what you think. If there's some positive feedback I'll get the Enhancement/Pull Request balls rolling. Use at your own risk ;-)

Bob
Attachments
uxToolsMenu.livecode.zip
(1.75 KiB) Downloaded 387 times

andresdt
Posts: 146
Joined: Fri Aug 16, 2019 7:51 pm

Re: Tools Menu Potential Enhancement

Post by andresdt » Sun May 30, 2021 3:50 pm

I don't know if he continues to develop this. I just know this is a really cool thing. Thank you very much for sharing.
In my very personal opinion the IDE should have this by default. :D

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