Daniel, I have used Visual Studio for many years and only recently started working with Qt Creator. I have found that I prefer the list of open files in the lower left window (Qt Creator style) over the tabbed windows (Visual Studio style). Thank you for the roundup of ways to navigate. I was unaware of several of those. I will have to remember Ctrl K. I just tried it and I love it!
Aloha, John On Apr 7, 2010, at 2:33 AM, Daniel Teske wrote: > >> 2) Working with tabs is very handy. It would be pleasant if you can open >> multiple documents and switch between them by clicking the tab instead >> of the up/down arrow. > > That suggestion comes up from time to time, so let me catch the opportunity > to > explain why we think managing your editors is a waste of time. And do a round > up of all the ways you can navigate source code in creator. > > a) Tabs don't scale. That is they work fine if you have 5-6 editors open, > they > get cumbersome with 10 and if you need more horizontal space then the tab bar > then the interface doesn't work at all. > > b) Tabs don't adapt to your working set. > > c) The common solution is to give the user the ability to reorder tabs. Now > the user has to manage tabs instead of writing code. > > d) Tabs force you to limit the amount of open editors, because otherwise you > get confused. > > Now, considers this use case description: > "The users wants to switch editors." > > That's wrong. The user never wants to switch editors, rather switching > editors > is a mean to some other end. Instead we need to figure out what common tasks > involve switching editors. Now I won't do that here, nor have we actually > done > that, but that's the thinking behind figuring out better ways to help the > user > navigate. And obviously we are drawing from a lot of experience ourselves > developing code. > > One of the common things in many use cases is switching editors in a small > working set. That is you are working on file a b and sometimes need to look > at > c, but much more editors. We have a shortcut for that: Ctrl+Tab > The list in that window is sorted according to last used. > > Or another common thing is that you are working on multiple classes/functions > that relate to each other, but are defined/declared in different files. We > have > two shortcut for that: F2 to follow the symbol. > And Ctrl+Shift+U to find usages. (Arguably the second one isn't that helpful > if > you already had the editor open, but the first one is great even if you know > that the editor would be once of the first one in the Ctrl+Tab list) > > And obviously we have F4 for switching between header and source. > > And then there is: Alt+Left for going backwards in the navigation history. > > Or use the locator (Ctrl+K) to simply tell creator where you want to go. > Obviously it can be used to open files, but opening files is a mean to some > other end. > > Let me give you an example for that: > The use case being: Doing a simple fix in AMethod in SomeClass which comes > from > someclass.cpp/someclass.h > > With a tabbed user interface, you search for someclass.cpp in your tab bar, > search for ::AMethod, find out that the method is not in that file, search > for > someclass.h in the tab bar, indeed the function is inline, do your one line > fix > and forgot where you came from. > > With Creator, you can press Ctrl+K m AMet (depending on your project, you > probably need to type just 3-4 chars of the name.) Do your one line fix and > then use Alt+Back to go back where you were. > > There are a few more like: Ctrl+K c for classes, Ctrl+K : for all symbols. > And > thanks to a community contribution: Ctrl+K . for symbols from the current > file. > > daniel > _______________________________________________ > Qt-creator mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator _______________________________________________ Qt-creator mailing list [email protected] http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
