Hi Mike,
I would not like to participate on this discussion because I don't like
floating inspectors in most OS X applications. So, I can't be impartial. :p
Mike Schrag wrote:
> I see two goals for WOLips -- one is to continue to build out features
> to support WebObjects development, the other is to work towards
> providing a development experience that people expect out of a Mac app
> ... This change clearly doesn't add new features, and isn't intended to
> support any future features. This is purely an aesthetic change. The
> eclipse approach as a single window interface is very unmaclike. That we
> open Entity Modeler in a new window by default is much more macish and
> really not eclipseish -- you can tell by how much work we have to do to
> make that behave mostly as you expect.
You are right when you say that the main question is: "Is WOLips an
Eclipse app or a Mac app"?
Approximately 50% of developers that work with me have been using
Windows for WebObjects development. Based only on these statistics, I
believe WOLips is an Eclipse application.
> If you look at really any Apple
> app, what we show as a Properties view would be an Inspector window.
> Open Interface Builder and it would behave the same way -- always-on-top
> of Entity Modeler, and it wouldn't be any change to the way you manage
> focus at all. The main difference is that you CAN close it, and reduce
> clutter. Eclipse LOVES clutter -- it's like their mission statement to
> provide as much crap in one UI as they possibly can -- actions, menus,
> buttons, views, coolbars, toolbars, view menus. It's ridiculous. If you
> use Xcode for development, you'll find that you don't run it full screen
> -- you have a lot more individual windows vs Eclipse's one huge window.
And if you make a simple Google search you will find a lot of people
that agree window management is not one of the most exciting features of
Xcode.
Changing the way Entity Modeler Properties window behave will not change
the way we use Eclipse (full screen, with a lot of views, menus and
toolbars).
> It would also be a better use of space because currently we use
> Eclipse's tabbed preferences panel, which those tabs on the left side,
> which is a big waste of space and look ugly as hell.
>
Looking at the screenshot you posted, I can't see any clear advantage.
The space occupied by the old Properties view is now empty. The new
floating Properties view is hiding information about properties and
relationships.
It can make sense if you plan to produce an Entity Modeler solo
application for Mac. But it doesn't fit well the Eclipse platform context.
> Anyway ... I'm not sold on this, but Eclipse UI is the suck, so I'm
> always looking a ways we can make it suck less.
>
Eclipse "abstract" UI is an old and known problem. But, being honest,
Xcode window management is far from good too. Designing good UI is
something really difficult. IMHO, the problem here is related with
context. Are you creating a tool in the context of Eclipse or Mac?
Cheers,
Henrique
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