C6 F12 button and C11 pad discussion

ide
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To handle the thread drift - new topic

I didn’t undertand you. Can you give an example of what you do on C6 F12 that is missing now?

So in C6 window designer when I press F12, I can change the tab order and properties of the controls.

So where there is a dedicated Tab order pad and dedicated properties pad in C11, this is all in one in C6 and when I push F12, it opens up maximised with the column widths how I like it. Besides the tab order pad is temperamental in C11, sometimes I can drag a control up and it goes where it’s dropped other times it doesnt and I am aware that the horizontal line move’s horizontally to indicate whether its on a tab or not or in a group or not.

So in the screenshot I have select 3 entry fields, on the right side I can see which controls are different because their font has gone italic, I can move those up or down in the tab order using the up and down arrow at the very top, or I could select just one control and change its tab order, and I can also change properties for one or a selection of controls from the same window.

Its nice and spread out, a nice sized font, it just works for me.

In C11, I have two different pads to work with unlike one in C6 and at the moment they pop out as they are tied to the edge of the IDE. In fact I’ve just tried detaching them and I can get them to popup now, but in the F4 property pad when I select 3 controls I dont see any italic text for the controls which have differences.

Having a maximise button for the pads would be nice so they remember to open maximised and having it open on the monitor the IDE is running on would be nice.
Got 3 monitors here, if I have an IDE open on my main middle monitor which is where my start button etc, then if I do some work on the IDE on my right or left monitor, the pads open on the middle monitor still.

Plus everytime I go into a window, the pads appear so I have to close them down before I can do anything to a control on the window designer. I’m jumping in and out of the window designer for different windows all the time and its just something else thats unnecessary to do. The pads could stay hidden and pop up when the hotkey is pressed.

The mouse wheel doesnt work on the C11 property pad but the mousewheel works on the C6 F12 window (I using Freewheel on C6) FreeWheel (archive.org)

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I think thats covered everything.

Edit
One other point, by having the C6 F12 property editor window opening maximised which the property pads cant do, when I close it, these monitors are getting bigger and bigger now which doesnt help, but I just move the mouse up to the top right window and can click the left mouse button to close the window without looking. I cant do that with the C11/Visual Studio property pads, their red close button has a bit of a border around them for start and they dont open maximised and its that which makes it very quick and easy to close with a mouse.

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I agree it works different on the IDE based on SharpDevelop than C6 and before, and takes some times to get used to it. It happens frequently that we just use the UI without taken time to specifically analize the UI and just not realize the lots of features it has.

For example Tab Order Assistant and Properties pads can be undocked double clicking on their window titles, then docked together one as they are on C6 and then maximized right clicking on the title area and choosing Maximize. Ok, I agree that they are several steps and if you want to alternate this view with the view of them docked on the IDE on a regular basis it is not that productive.

Those pads when docked can also be pinned with a fix position and size, or retracted and expands automatically on mouse cursor over.

You can adjust column widths and they are remembered when you close and open the Windows Designer.

When multiple fields are selected, it seems it doesn’t show differences in italics, but blanking those texts, and if they are checkbox, a third state with a minus inside is shown. As before, you can set properties in block to all fields selected, you can move them dragging and dropping, and if the selections are spread, moving them with the buttons mantain the relative separation.

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What I think it doesn’t have is the Property Column view (instead of property tree).

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The F4 Property pad and the F12 Property editor have different layouts.

So because not having these C11 pads maximised was an issue for me, I just happened to right mouse click on the title bar to see if I could get the poup menu with the window options visible (Restore, Move, Size, Minimise, Maximise & Close) to see what options are enabled. The maximise option exists even though the button doesnt so I’ve now managed to get the pads opening maximised everytime, still have to close them down everytime I go into the window designer, but at least I’ve got them maximised to the window which is more like the C6 property editor. Same for the tab order.

I’ve also discovered how I can get the mouse wheel to work in the C11 F4 property pad so it will scroll up and down, I need to click both the Catagorized & Alphabetical tool bar buttons to toggle between the two sort order views to get the mouse wheel to work. Another way that makes the mouse wheel work is to adjust the size of the bottom bit with the Actions and Embeds option on, that then makes the property scroll with the mouse wheel.

Some entries are duplicated, like justification is shown twice, the first one doesnt do anything so these entries which do nothing could have a light grey or some other colour background to indicate it doesnt do anything!

If I select 3 entry fields in the C11 window designer, press F4, I’ve just realised what its doing, its removing entries from the property pad which are different for each entry field. So rather than seeing the italic text in C6, the entries disappear in C11. Maybe keep the entries but make their backgrounds go a light grey or something to indicate they are different.

The locator in the property pad doesnt accept typing if a property pad element is not selected, ie press F4 load the property pad, type “disable” and have it work. We have to specifically click in the locator first before typing disable to get the disable option as the only option showing. If you close the property pad and then press F4 again, its still got “disable” in the locator when I would have expected it to have reset back to normal.

Dont get me wrong its flexible and powerful in that it does more than the C6 F12 property editor but its just missing a few bits of refinement or me getting used to it. It does work differently thats for sure.

Interestingly whilst I can select x+1 number of controls in the window designer, I cant multi select a number of controls from the drop down list box at the top of the property pad, I would have expected that ability.

Does anyone know if these property pads can be edited so I can customise them?

I need to go through this link Is there documentation on how to create addins for the Clarion IDE? - marketplace / Addins - ClarionHub to see what I can customise over and beyond the settings options in the IDE.

The IDE appears to be more flexible and powerful, but I need to get up and running with it quickly, and the information to do this is distributed far and wide. :grinning:

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And you know why thats more productive, its a vertical version of this.

Letter case and text legibility in normal and low vision - PMC (nih.gov)

The C11/ Visual Studio property pad is a very uniform dual colour double column rectangle.

TLDR Shapes of words in (a), outlined in (b), are more distinctive in mixed-case and lower case than all upper-case text and thats what you get in the C6 property editor.

Too much uniformity slows the brain recognition which can affect productivity imo! :grinning:

We are all getting older, I know loads of people complaining about the brightness of todays car lights and some of us have had cataract surgery (I think Arnor had some a while back), me personally I hate surgery so will avoid anything like that. It means I run my monitors at 50% of Night Light Strength (Win+A, Settings, Night Light Settings), in a black out room (blackout blinds) with the lights at a colour temp setting of around 3000K Kelvin Colour Temperatures Different Light Sources Stock Vector (Royalty Free) 125658887 | Shutterstock
and the brightness from the monitors is about 30Lux (I have a lux meter here) and the room is generally about 130Lux in brightness. Its a bit like being a Las Vegas casino with light levels, I dont get eye fatigue so I can spend hours in front of the computer, I cant work on laptops now because they burn my eyes. :nerd_face:

But I’m also surprised Microsoft havent recognised these things in their user interface, or maybe they have with the bigger red close button in the top right of the windows we see in windows 10 & 11 but not in other parts of their software.

JMO. :roll_eyes: