Author Topic: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?  (Read 11297 times)

machish

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Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« on: May 22, 2013, 12:10:25 AM »
You can call me old-school, but I don't particularly like tabbed documents. I like to have child windows, as I had in SlickEdit 17.
How can I get back to having child windows? I thought that the 'Editing -> Files per window' option used to control this behavior, but that no longer appears to be the case?

Thanks!

-martin

Tim Kemp

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2013, 12:11:28 PM »
The new tabbed window interface looks to me almost exactly like what I had in DOS Brief over 20 years ago. It's certainly not what I was expecting. I had thought you were going to allow document windows to leave the main SlickEdit window. Instead of becoming less restrictive the interface has become more so. In my opinion the UI is moving in the wrong direction.

I agree with Martin; I liked the old way better.

wbullaughey

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2013, 03:05:04 PM »
I don't care for the new MDI/tab interface either. Making them floating and independently re-sizable would help a lot.

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2013, 10:00:45 PM »
Next beta will allow you to float edit windows...

machish

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2013, 10:22:12 PM »
Great to hear that! I'm looking forward to the next Beta!
-martin

machish

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2013, 04:28:30 AM »
(Using Beta5, win8, 64bit)
I hate to say it, but I still don't like the Tab interface. :)
I will frequently have dozens of source code windows open. I'll usually refer to the top-5 most-recently used, but sometimes I will want to go beyond 10 of the MRU. I find it difficult to keep track of the different views when everything is maximized (i.e. tabbed), which is why I want separate child windows. ctrl+tab doesn't seem to work well for me with tab-groups.
The problems I have with the Floating Tabs mostly stem from the fact that they're Always-on-Top:
-When I float a tab, it pops out of the 'child' area. It therefore obscures the 'Symbol Preview' and 'Defs' windows, which are part of the main window.
-When I open a new file by double-clicking on a reference in the 'Reference' window, it starts out docked, and is therefore *behind* the floating windows.
-When the focus is on one of the floating windows, alt+w does not bring up the 'Window' menu.
-When I have the focus on a floating window, alt+tab to another program, and alt+tab back again, the focus is NOT on the floating window.

Am I missing some configuration option that would make working with all sorts of floating windows easier? (Now I'm starting to wonder if I should float *all* windows, and have the main frame as a tiny window about 20 pixels tall and 1000 wide. :)

Is there a good reason to get rid of the child-MDI interface?

Thanks,

-martin

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2013, 12:57:51 PM »
There are too many problems with the old child-MDI interface for most people. The best of all worlds would have been if we could have two user interfaces but since SlickEdit is just a little bit smaller than Microsoft (ya just a little), this was and still is a totally impossibility.

- Obscuring tool windows. Eventually we will support tool windows being docked on floating windows. The Defs and Symbol Preview will be among the first we try to support duplicates of. Sounds like the Reference tool window needs to support duplicates as well. In any case, we eventually need support docking duplicates of tool windows on floating windows and save/restore your floating layout for new floating windows.
- When focus is on one of the floaing windows, Alt+w does not bring up the Window menu. This is a bug and needs to be fixed.
- Alt+tab back to slickedit does not put focus back on the floating window. We will look into this.

jvert

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #7 on: June 01, 2013, 03:27:17 PM »
machish, try binding Ctrl-TAB to next_tab_group. I found myself much happier with that. It is still not perfect as occasionally it will also change the active tab in the newly-active tab group. An annoyance I haven't tracked down yet.

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2013, 10:42:33 PM »
next_tab_group doesn't maintain the active tab of the tab group it switches to. It switches to the first tab (left most tab) in the next group. prev_tab_group switches to the last tab (right most tab).

Maybe there should be two sets of commands. Maybe we need additional commands maybe called next_tab_group_active_tab and prev_tab_group_active_tab which do what you want. I don't think there is a way to do this from Slick-C right now but the C++ code has the functionality.

rowbearto

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2013, 12:31:57 AM »
You can get the equivalent of the old child-mdi by floating the windows and moving/resizing them to be inside of the edit area in main slickedit window.

Also, if you have the old tab interface enabled (View->Toolbars->File Tabs), then all the old file tabs are in the same place they were before, and you can click on one to bring the "floating" window to the front and focused.

I've attached a screenshot so you can see that it is just like the old child-MDI interface.

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #10 on: June 02, 2013, 12:22:18 PM »
Interesting...Maybe we need an option for opening new edit windows as floating windows overlapping the main mdi area. Would that help?

rowbearto

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #11 on: June 02, 2013, 01:27:54 PM »
I personally like the new MDI interface better, so I don't plan on using the emulated child MDI and don't really need it back.

But for the folks that do want it, if there are enough of them - I think you would want an option to overlap with the main MDI window.

And when this option is enabled, if the main SE window is moved or resized, then the "child" MDI windows also will "move" and retain their relative location to the upper left corner of the main MDI window.

With current "emulation" of child MDI as the SE code is now, if SE main window is moved or resized, then the floating windows don't follow.

Its not something I plan to use, but the other folks in this thread may like it :).

Its also another way you can keep the old style while still using leveraging your new floating MDI code - "work smarter, not harder".

You could even imagine bringing back the "restore" button, which just puts the window in "emulated child MDI" mode and floats it within the main MDI area.

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2013, 01:11:57 AM »
Thanks for another good idea. I would still like to see requests for this.

Tim Kemp

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #13 on: June 03, 2013, 11:10:37 AM »
Since I was one of the MDI complainers I feel like I should chime in. For me, by adding the floating windows you have improved the interface enormously. That's a feature I've been wanting for many years.

I'm a heavy mouse user so allowing the tabs to be dragged from window to window works well for me. I doubt I'll use the keyboard shortcuts I added for moving tabs again.

I also appreciate getting the drop-down file list back. I find that I often have more tabs than will fit across the top and the list is a much better way to select the file I want than scrolling. One minor issue, it's pretty easy to get the drop-down list temporarily stuck open (just click the list open, then click in the edit window.)

Are there any plans to reinstitute tab sorting? I really prefer that the tabs be in alphabetical order. Since they are sorted in the drop-down list it's not a big deal, but it would be nice.

Clark

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Re: Beta4: Disabling tabs/MDI?
« Reply #14 on: June 03, 2013, 12:50:22 PM »
I have fixed the problem with the new drop down file list getting stuck. We are currently working on sorting and other features from the file tabs tool window.