4WDevolution question

[Richard Gaskin]

Bill Prothero wrote:

 > Frankly, I would prefer the ide tools palette and the Devo tools
 > palette overlap at will. One or the other can be in front, overlapped
 > or not.  I generally only use the ide tools when creating UI objects,
 > so most of the time it’s invisible.

Perhaps I've failed in my goal:

With devo's generously-sized "Tools" button, the aim was that you should 
be able to open and close the IDE's tool palette as needed at least as 
easily as fiddling with window layers and shifting windows around.

Click once:  it's open.

Click again: it's gone (when I'm busy I hate slowing down to aim for
              the little 6px close icon on palette windows).


The assumption with devo is that, unlike using most apps, when you're in 
LiveCode you're MAKING apps. And YOUR stuff is the important stuff - 
everything else is subservient. Why else would you have launched LC?

Your app has its own windows, its own menus, its own toolbar, etc. 
Sometimes even its own windowBoundingRect. :)

So rather than fight for precious real estate with an IDE's stuff, a 
tool like devo lets your app take over. You just use the IDE's parts 
when you need them, fluid enough to get to them so that you don't have 
to hesitate about closing them between uses.

The more you take advantage of it, the more it turns the development 
process inside out: instead of building an app inside of an IDE, it's 
like using an IDE inside your app.

The more of its Preferences option you use, the less you get: your 
screen can become a wide open sky, ready to fill with YOUR stuff:

http://fourthworld.net/lc/rg-lc-ide.png

On small laptop screens like a Macbook Air it's a godsend (and a big 
part of why I first made it), since managing all the IDE windows feels 
very cramped at 768p.  And on a big screen it's luxurious.


I have a few enhancements in my copy that'll land in the public version 
soon, now that I see more are using it.  I'll drop in the window 
placement save that Brian suggested with those.

I probably won't bother with adjustments for the IDE's 
windowBoundingRect fiddling just yet, under the assumption that it may 
go away in the IDE soon and then that valuable global property may be 
something your app is using, and should be honored by tools like devo so 
everything you need works well within it.

If you already have devolution installed, you never need to worry about 
hunting it down somewhere on the web and comparing versions - software 
lends itself well to that sort of thing: like LC itself, whenever a new 
version is available it'll let you know and update itself in place.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  http://fourthworld.com/products/devolution