[MonoDevelop] Quick finder discussion

[Michael Hutchinson]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 4:06 AM, Mike Krüger <mkrueger at novell.com> wrote:
> I need some opinions on our 'quick finder'. I want to improve the class
> quick finder.
>
> It has some issues:
>
> + It takes up too much screen space
> + It could contain some more functionalaty (think of toolbar buttons)

I definitely agree that we could add some more buttons to make it more
useful, and make it take less vertical space. Right now I hide it,
because I just don't find it useful.

> XCode has a very nice 'quick finder' - see the screenshots in:
>
> http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/newinxcode23.html
>
> What I find nice is that it merges the 'notebook' and the class quick
> finder. Xcode doesn't have a notebook for multiple open files instead
> files can be switched with a drop down (prev/next file buttons are at
> the left).
>
> The question is - should we do that too? The benefit is that we save
> screen space and it'll look very clean. The downside is that switching
> files is more than just 'one click' and that's no longer possible to
> quickly see all open files (but I think every developer knows what files
> he was opening :)).

I would be strongly against making the file-combo change right now,
for a number of reasons:

* Tabs are very familiar to our users and users of most other IDEs,
and also very familiar to any new user who's used a modern web
browser.

* Tabs can be re-ordered, and potentially dragged off and re-docked at
the side, or left floating on another monitor. None of these are
possible with the combobox.

* Having a list of all open files is useful - for example, you can see
at a glance which files are dirty.

* MD uses a dock/pad workspace model like VS, Xcode uses a
floating-window workspace model, so for Xcode a window represents a
single document, and the combo is a way to switch the document.
Because the workspace models are different, workspace-related things
like this may not transfer over easily and still be usable.

Perhaps we can figure out a way to make it work well in MD, but I
think we have many other priorities that would be more useful to our
users.

-- 
Michael Hutchinson
http://mjhutchinson.com