Regaining IDE Efficiency: Property Inspector

[Richard Gaskin]

Mike Kerner wrote:

 > I'm not a fan of sheets.  I find myself doing constant scrolling

You're not using v9's PI? ;)


 > because the property I'm looking for never seems to be on the screen,
 > or if I'm changing multiple properties and messing with settings to
 > see what the combination does, I'm constantly going up down up down,
 > overshooting the property, having to scroll-scroll-scroll to get to
 > the right spot.

True, prop sheets with views grouped by type and a Favorites view are best.


 > You can't take advantage of the 2D space (think about the position tab
 > in the PI as the most obvious example) to organize related properties.

That's one.

 > You also can't use graphics or group boxes, shadows, colors, or
 > backgrounds to make it clearer how properties are associated with each
 > other.

Why not?  Most sheets I've seen use the color/pat as the background for 
the value, pretty much as we see them in LC's PI.


 > Shortcuts to switch tabs in the PI would make navigating better, IMHO.
 > Ctrl-right arrow or ctrl-left arrow, ctrl-1..n would make flipping
 > between pages faster, but the layout and the proximity of the tabs to
 > the properties now still makes navigating between multiple pages of
 > properties for an object and fiddling with them much faster than a
 > sheet does.

Do we even have a keyboard shortcut to move focus to the Inspector?

Back when I used to use Adobe products they used Cmd-, to shift focus to 
their inspector.

Even if we do, though, since any palette has a global-ish scope how 
would the developer using it know when a shortcut is handled by the 
Inspector and when it's handled by their own app's menubars or other 
shortcut-driven features?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com