Wish Modules tabs - full name

aklisiewicz

aklisiewicz

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First of all I have to say, the more I use B4A the more I like it. The best thing I can say about B4A is amount of documentation, examples and forum (which is one of the best support forums I have used).
When I started using B4A 2 years ago I was a little discouraged, and almost abandoned the tool.
I was watching however what is going on and I think Erel is listening suggestions and adjusting to the user needs. I see B4A becomes more and more powerful, which makes me happy.
B4A IDE still has lots of room for improvement and I hope this will be one of them.

I keep having problems figuring out which Tab has which module opened. Can we please have some kind of way showing Full Module Name (ToolTip would be the best OR Status line at the bottom of IDE OR adjustable Tab width).
Clicking each Tab just to find where needed Module is, is really frustrating. I hope it is not really much work to add such functionality.

Thank you
Arthur Klisiewicz
 
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qsrtech

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When I started using B4A 2 years ago I was a little discouraged, and almost abandoned the tool.
I was watching however what is going on and I think Erel is listening suggestions and adjusting to the user needs. I see B4A becomes more and more powerful, which makes me happy.
B4A IDE still has lots of room for improvement and I hope this will be one of them.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much my thoughts as well. I hope the product will become accepted in the mainstream so our investment in time and energy will pay off eventually. My suggestion to help improve the IDE is to make it more customizable through addins like VB which could help offload some of the IDE enhancements work load. I think being a "closed" IDE will prevent it from growing at warp speed. I think the language/compiler is almost there, unfortunately the IDE/Designer still has quite a way to go. And I know it's a lot of little things which can take quite a lot of effort which is why allowing the IDE to be "customized" could help greatly.
 
aklisiewicz

aklisiewicz

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Erel !
Just see the screenshoot - the module names are mess - and there is no way to figure out which is which.
This isn't really helpful to see it like that. I want to see the full module name somewhere when I move my mouse over the Tab (or at least when I select it).

Art
 

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qsrtech

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I believe the tabs are more of a legacy/carry over feature that didn't grow with the IDE, for example now with classes and service you can pile up the modules quite fast, also if you want to do simple enum types you need a whole code module for 3 or 4 enum constants so you can see how the tabs have been outgrown. At the very least they should be auto sized for the name/label of the "module", and multiline. There's so much screen/toolbar space that is being under-utilized.

Here's a few IDE Enhancements I'd like to see to bring it inline with other IDE's. Seconds add up to mins, mins to hours, hours to days...
Note: this particular project has been broken up into several libraries otherwise there'd be another 30+ modules/tabs.

IDEEnhancements.png
 
Q

qsrtech

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Erel said:
Ctrl + E is the way to navigate in large projects. It is more useful than any list or combo box.

BTW, you can use F2 to quickly connect B4A-Bridge.
Click to expand...

Then put "ctrl-e" as a "autocomplete" text box in the tool bar or above the right panel.

And all the tool bar items have short cut keys so why bother having a "limited" toolbar then?
 
aklisiewicz

aklisiewicz

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CTRL-E seems to list only Subs (not modules) and it would be useful if there is at least a scrollbar, so it is irrelevant to my issue.

Every time I open B4A the right panel with the modules is resized to its original state, so I have to scroll again in order to reach modules at the bottom of the list. I wish the panel remembered its settings, so when I resize it and restart B4A it remembers where I left off. It is very anoying to go and resize it every time, and that is the only place so fat I can see the whole list of modules in the project.

I would also see more shortcuts for Menu options (or perhaps they are implemented but not listed).
BTW - is there any list/table with available shortcuts for B4A (so I can keep it all in one place) ???

I agree with the previous posts. If Erel will make IDE more open to add-ons the interface could grow nicely the same way the B4A libraries grow.
This will definitely add more value to the product. B4A IDE is not bad, but comparing to VB or Eclipse it looks kinda pale.

Arthur
 
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qsrtech

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Longtime User
aklisiewicz said:
I agree with the previous posts. If Erel will make IDE more open to add-ons the interface could grow nicely the same way the B4A libraries grow.
This will definitely add more value to the product. B4A IDE is not bad, but comparing to VB or Eclipse it looks kinda pale.

Arthur
Click to expand...

According to some of these posters, if you want all the powerful features then you should be using eclipse/java. Unfortunately I think they were being a little too short sighted. b4a already has so much power and tons of potential. I guess VBer's should've stuck to C and not stuck with it (VB) while it matured and let you do pretty much as much as C but probably faster.
 
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