Form Designer OK & Cancel

[DaveW]

Don't get me wrong, I think Basic4PPC is a great product - which makes the oddities stand out even more!

As a newbie I was confused by the layout and operation of the Form Designer. There is an OK and Cancel button - albeit in a very odd place. But these do not close the Designer - they refresh or cancel changes to the current object being designed. The ONLY way to close the Form Designer (as far as I can see) is to click the 'red X'. This seems a very strange way to manage a form, I am fairly certain that Microsoft Guidelines would say the red X is not supposed to be the primary form close option! Then the result of clicking 'red X' is invariably a message "Do you want to keep changes?" This happens even all you did was click on a control - you don't have to change or move it to make the Designer think the form needs saving.

I feel that there should be 'proper' OK & Cancel buttons at the bottom of the form. I think that this would make the feel of the interface much more 'normal' and life a bit easier - even that only means one less mouse click every time you open the Designer!

David.

 

[Erel]

I see your point and it will be improved.

 

[agraham]

Agreed! - I always thought it was a bit idiosyncratic but it didn't annoy me enough to bother commenting.

 

[Erel]

It may sound strange but the first version of the desktop IDE was almost an identical copy of the device IDE.
However the desktop IDE has gone several makeovers and it is now pretty different (and much more powerful) than the device IDE. This little issue is an evidence that there is still some place for improvement

 

[DaveW]

I don't want to sound negative, especially as I have only been here a week!

But if you *are* going to improve the Form Designer, perhaps you could look at the Menu Designer as well? This also lacks an OK & Cancel button. In addition, when you add a menu item the new item is not selected, Finally, the controls on the form would look a lot better if they just lined up and had the same sizes!

I completely understand how bits can get overlooked though, When I look at code in my commercial app that was written 3 or 4 years ago I sometimes have to wonder what I was thinking then!

 

[klaus]

I have also some improvement suggestion for the desktop Designer:

- Add a ListBox or a ComboBox with the list of the Controls, because the Next button is combersom with may Controls, if you go through fast you miss the right one and begin again, or at least a Previous button. Or when clicking on a control name in the IDE's list on the right, open the Designer and directly show the selected control, but here I am afraid that I am somewhat dreaming.

- Increase the width of the Name and Text Textboxes and the Data ListBox to make longer texts completly visible.

- In the Data ListBox for the ImageList Control allow to add image files by selecting those in a file selector like with the Image button, to avoid a lot of typing with 20 or more image files, and why not multi selection?

These are small things but would make the work with the Designer a little bit more comfortable, hopefully not only for me.

Best regards and thank you in advance.

 

[Erel]

These are small things but would make the work with the Designer a little bit more comfortable, hopefully not only for me.

I'm sure that these suggestions will be important for many users.

All of you, please don't hesitate to make any suggestion or feedback.

 

[klaus]

Hi Erel,

I forgot another suggestion for the IDE in my previous post.
- When duplicating a control, set the focus on this one (the duplicated one) and not leave it on the control to duplicate. I quite often modyfied the wrong one.

Best regards.

 

[LineCutter]

Another "could be easier, although I can do it as things are" suggestion would be to allow alignment of multiple controls (top/middle/bottom in horizontal & vertical orientation & set spacing of all selected to that between items 1 & 2). Just quicker & easier than lining up everything by hand.