Project Browser

[stam]

Hi all,
following a post i made in a different thread, i thought i'd post this here as well.

The Project Browser does things quite well for me, but it's not perfect.

I'd like to suggest these changes may help it make more usable and especially more approachable to newcomers:

1. The default needs to hide all the IDE stacks - this causes untold confusion for newcomers, and i suspect many just don't use it because of the perceived complexity.
2. The option to show/hide the IDE stacks should be a button in the PB itself, not a setting hidden away.
3. The PB should be more easily accessible - a button on the toolbar, much like Richard's Devolution plugin
4. Unlike the current default (which Devolution also follows) the PB needs to remember state.
Currently, if you close the PB everything resets to a top-level view. When you have many stacks and many cards with many groups, it can be really quite inconvenient to get back to the previous position. Maybe add a button to reset to top level view if needed.

I kinda think of the PB as something of an underused gem especially amongst newcomers. Changes like these would go a long way to making it more accessible to new users (i still count myself as such, having really only picked up LC in the last year, so i say this with that experience in mind). Even though I now use the Project Browser every day, these changes really would make it a lot smoother...

Stam

[richmond62]

Personally I'd just revert to using the Application OverView . . .

Plugins/revApplicationOverview
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Oh, Whoops, I just remembered I have NEVER used the Project Browser.

[bn]

@stam,

I know that you are using nested groups in your projects. Did it ever happen that the Project Browser went blank/empty when you had your groups expanded for inspection? More specifically expanded a group and at least a subgroup and then for example created a new stack?

If so I might have a fix for that and if you are interested I could send it to you and you could test it.

It just so happens that that bug in Project Browser is so annoying that I had a look at it and narrowed the source of the error down.
And today I found a tentative fix for that bug.
Though the code of the Project Browser is not for the faint of heart... (took me a couple of weeks to get into it and of course I still don't fully understand it) It is an Ali Lloyd masterpiece. (Ali works at LC Ltd.) based on Trevor Devore's dataView (also a master piece). DataView is very fast data visualization tool. Faster than dataGrid which was also developed by Trevor Devore.

Kind regards
Bernd

[stam]

I know that you are using nested groups in your projects. Did it ever happen that the Project Browser went blank/empty when you had your groups expanded for inspection? More specifically expanded a group and at least a subgroup and then for example created a new stack?

Hi Bernd,

I'll be honest... no.

When i expand a group i consider this by definition a focused 'intervention' - i only expand the group for a specific reason and then immediate 'stop editing' the group to avoid mishaps.

I can't say i've ever looked at the project browser while editing a group and certainly never created a new stack while a group is being edited. I just can't see how that would be normal workflow (for me anyway...)


Having said that I thought i'd test this unlikely scenario anyway - using LC 9.6.4, i used the example i previously posted with the bug you fixed, had the project browser open and edited group. No issues with project browser...

best regards
Stam

[bn]

I meant expanding a group in Project Browser, not editing groups.

Expand a group and its subgroup and then some subgroups for inspection in Project Browser and then create a new stack.
I mean that use case.

Kind regards
Bernd

[stam]

Ah ok - thanks for clarifying.

I'd never noticed this before, mainly because i used to use Richard's Devolution to show/hide the project browser (which of course resets everything to a top level view every time you show this).

I reproduced exactly what you describe. Interestingly, the first time i added a normal stack, no issues occurred. On adding a substack this occurred and thereafter kept occurring every time, no matter if substack or normal stack.

Clearly this is a bug - if you have a fix, is it worth posting a bug report?

Stam

[bn]

Clearly this is a bug - if you have a fix, is it worth posting a bug report?

There is a bug report by Richard Gaskin with the symptoms I also observe.
https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22072

I will report this with the proposed fix to QCC within the next days.

Kind regards
Bernd

[stam]

There is a bug report by Richard Gaskin with the symptoms I also observe.
https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22072

I will report this with the proposed fix to QCC within the next days.

Thanks Bernd - not sure if it helps prioritise such things, but i've added my email to this bug report as well...

Best regards
Stam

[FourthWorld]

The thing that'll move that report forward is a reproducible recipe. If you find one please post it there. Thanks.

[richmond62]

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Well, that's not very satisfactory.

[richmond62]

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Aaaaah!

[richmond62]

I kinda think of the PB as something of an underused gem especially amongst newcomers.

I would argue [with the exception of the crappy, under-sized icons] that the Application Overview is also
an underused gem; especially as it remembers its previous state.
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[stam]

I would argue that the audio clips/videoclips icons that appear in your picture (which show up with script-only stacks as well! Why not list these assets along with other controls rather than have their own confusing entry... it's not 1989 any more ), the size of text, alignment etc and not just the icons make layout much worse than it needs to be for new users.
For new users who don't have the baggage of using this for many years, it borders on unusable...

Also, and i may be wrong as i don't really use this, there is no indicator of behaviour scripts etc, like there is in the Project Browser.
My point is that even if more usable in some respects, it's in need of a lot of TLC...

From the comments above i get the impression that essentially the Application Overview has been depracated in favour of the Project Browser but is still kept around as people familiar with it continue to use it. Both have problems and really at least one of these should be fixed... (especially as there is no longer the excuse of 'this is FOSS, do it yourself').

[richmond62]

Looking critically at both the Application Overview and the Project Browser
I would argue that they both have useful features and there needs to be a
new 'something' that replaces them both, uses features from both, and
more.

[stam]

The thing that'll move that report forward is a reproducible recipe. If you find one please post it there. Thanks.

Dear Richard,
@Bernd already posted the recipe above and i was able to reproduce. He has also identified a fix.

However to move things forward i have posted @Bernd's recipe in your bug report he posted above (https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22072).

Best regards
Stam