Death of the Application Browser

[J. Landman Gay]

On 12/1/2015 12:53 AM, Geoff Canyon wrote:
> Navigator doesn't do the Finder column view exactly

That's the blocker for me, not just in Navigator but in all the 
alternate control browsers I've looked at (four so far.) All the 
alternatives are well written and feature-rich, but they are all use 
either separate lists, or very long lists with indentations to indicate 
owners and groups. With any more than a few controls, the indentations 
scroll off the window and you've lost your reference point.

The alternatives all appear to be very good tools for someone who works 
only on their own stacks with a limited number of controls. In that 
case, you already know the layout and structure, and it's fine to 
isolate things into independent lists and groups, or indented lists 
which won't be so long that they require a lot of scrolling or the 
additional overhead of repeated filtering. (And don't get me started on 
the PB filtering. There is no documentation in the user guide, and I 
can't remember the secret syntax that even lets me isolate a control 
type. In the AB you can just click on a header to do that.)

But a lot of my work involves short sprints with stacks that other 
people have written, where I don't know the layout or the organization. 
Controls often have no names and use haphazard layouts. I need an 
overview that doesn't require a lot of clicking around and doesn't 
require me to memorize what objects are on what card before I can 
navigate accurately. In that situation, isolated lists of things don't 
work, you always have to know where you are on the map. I need to jump 
from one place to another repeatedly, and the easiest way to do that is 
with a hierarchical breadcrumb display.

My ideal control browser would be based on the paned column view of the 
App Browser with some of the additional features of the PB added. I wish 
the AB had been enhanced rather than rewritten as an infinite list of 
awkwardly accessible controls that displays less information in a larger 
footprint.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com