I agree that we need to refine the ideas in the inspector. Is Frederic on this list?
I also understood from Niko on monday that he is working on an alternative inspector that very much ressembles the one from Visualworks (which I very much like). The expandable tree 'infinite inspector' is a good idea for exploring an object's state but it should probably not be applied to everything that one can navigate to from within the object (i.e. not for methods). Getting to the methods from within the inspector is cool but if they expand in the same tree as the state, you quickly end up with a tree that does not show you anything anymore. After a couple of expansions, I often get a tree mixing state and behavior on different levels, with long method lists that require me to scroll through the tree and close levels again to see what I want. In the end, I have no easy way of navigating the object structure anymore because opening/ closing the tree levels to see what I want in a single window becomes not manageable. Here is what I would like to see happening (and I'm willing to help to get there too!): - Double clicking on an item in the tree on the left should open a new inspector window on that item (I really do not like adding it as a root in the same window: I find it confusing having two roots). This will already allow me to open up another view on the same structure or keep a window open on certain structure so I can return to it afterwards. - Do not make the methods expandable in the tree but rather open a list of methods in the right-hand pane that can be selected (and 'send' to the object if it's a unary message). Right now, selecting methods will give the list of selectors, which is not so useful. - Use visual icons instead of 'Class' and 'Methods' (duno if this is possible in the treemorph?) - Do not 'inspect/explore' the class as a normal object but make it jump to a browser instead On 21 Oct 2009, at 15:54, Stéphane Ducasse wrote: > Hi guys > > we tried to use and force you to use the new inspector and it does not > fly that well. > I'm sure that frederick is open to suggestion so please send your > remarks. Here were mine :) > > Stef > > > Hello Stef, > > > > here what is really strange and annoying is that we cannot see the > collection elements in the right pane > > Now it is fixed. > > on the left Elements is confusing. because this is not clear the > relationship with array, firstInd.... > It shows only elements of any kind of collection (it is simply a > collect: [:o | o] on the collection). > > on the right this is also frustrating that we cannot modify, touch the > elements. > > Ok... but you can expand the Elements, select the element you want to > change, put the new value in the description pane and accept it. > > I'm not sure that we want to see the class (in an expandable manner). > For the methods may be you want to stop and show the methods but > expandabel > may be by defualt you should not show the class and methods as > expandable and have a menu entry doing that (expand) > > I'm not sure to understand what you want. For me the NewInspector it > is a like an infinite inspector: if you want to go into an object, you > can. So if you want to inspect a class or the methods, you should have > the possibility to do it. > > Fréd > > > > _______________________________________________ > Pharo-project mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project ---------------------------- Johan Brichau [email protected] _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
