Death of the Application Browser

[Geoff Canyon]

I'm not sure I understand. If you have two buttons that you want to work
with, and the buttons are each three groups deep on separate cards in
separate stacks, then if you were looking at button "a" and wanted to look
at button "b" wouldn't a column view require you to:

1. Click on the stack containing button "b"
2. Click on the card in the stack containing button "b"
3. Click on the group on the card in the stack containing button "b"
4. Click on the group within that group on the card in the stack containing
button "b"
5. Click on button "b" to do whatever with it.

...and then rinse and repeat each time you want to switch

With Navigator you can either:

1. Open two copies of Navigator.
2. In one, navigate to button "a"
3. In one, navigate to button "b"

... and then leave both Navigators that way so you can easily work on the
two buttons.

Or:
1. Navigate to button "a" and bookmark it
2. Navigate to button "b" and bookmark it
3. Work with the bookmarks in any way you like.

And note that you can rename the bookmarks any way you like, so although
they start as something like:

     button "Button" [1008] of card id 1002 of stack "Untitled 1"

You could change it to:

     Account Management Library -- button "Button" [1008] of card id 1002
of stack "Untitled 1"


And as an aside, Navigator has two easy ways of filtering controls:

The filter box simply filters on the text displayed in Navigator, so it's
easy to type "button" to see only buttons (assuming no fields are named
"button") or type (part of) the id of a control to show it.

The Filter... command on the Actions menu lets you type any livecode you
like, using tID to reference the control in question. So for example, this
will work as a filter:

word 1 of the name of tID is "button" and (the height of tID is 30 or char
3 of the short name of tID is "b")

gc



On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 3:39 PM, J. Landman Gay <jacque at hyperactivesw.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
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