Will the Back button in the IDE ever work properly again?

We’re now at r3.3, and still the history is disfunctional as soon as I use more than one Tab.

For example, if I cmd-doubleclick on an identifier to see its declaration in a different tab, I can’t get back using the Back button. The old IDE had no problem with this.

Will this ever get any attention or does Xojo keep claiming that the history is working just fine?

Or am I using it wrong, after all?

3.3?
Still says 3.2 for me on the downloads page. Am I missing out on something?

The back/forward button behavior is intended to be tab-specific, which is different than how Real Studio worked.

[quote=45407:@David Wylie]3.3?
Still says 3.2 for me on the downloads page. Am I missing out on something?[/quote]
3.3 is just finishing beta and should be out soon.

Paul, I understand that the Back button is now tab specific. My point is that this is wrong. It’s just not usable. Isn’t anyone else seeing this?

Even with it attempting to be tab-specific, it still often doesn’t work and is buggy for me.

I think many users would like the option for it to simply function as a program-wide back button, with one consolidated history for all tabs. Couldn’t it simply remember the tab that each “page” was open in, and bring the user to that tab to show the page when using Back/Forward?

2+2 = 5 is wrong
Its not what you expect but that’s very different from “wrong”

Yeah, I just isolated one of the buggy behaviors I’ve been struggling with: <https://xojo.com/issue/26799>

Wrong is anything your client doesn’t like (or a majority of your clients)

Wrong is when its not functioning as designed - it is acting per tab as designed
The intent was to mimic Safaris per tab back & forward

You have different expectations for how it should behave than how it was designed

I disagree… You are producing a product… that product should meet the expectations (as closely as possilbe) of your clients…Just because Safari does it makes it a GOOD thing? A web browser and and IDE are totally different… and as such should act appropriately. XOJO needs to begin LISTENING to their clients… if they say something is “wrong”, then perhaps they have a reason for saying that… XOJO is in business to make money… We all realize that, and would be stupid to thing otherwise. By the same token, XOJO needs to realize WHERE that money comes from… and your product should reflect the desires of your clients… not some need to mimic Apple, or because one of the XOJO engineers thinks it might be “cool”.

I’ve been a loyal XOJO client for 7 years so far… and while there is not a lot of competition (my opinion)… it would not be in the best interest for XOJO to get “cocky”… I’m sure I could name a few companies that took that attidute and are either gone, or mere shadows of their former selves…

Your opinion of how this should behave and mine (and that of others) differ.
Neither is more or less “right” or “wrong” - they just differ.
And since these are opinions - not hard cold facts like 2+2 = 4 - they can differ without being “wrong”

There is a feedback request to alter the behavior #30602

[quote=45426:@Norman Palardy]Wrong is when its not functioning as designed - it is acting per tab as designed
The intent was to mimic Safaris per tab back & forward

[/quote]

I find that completely unintuitive for an IDE … and I think most do too… In RS I used back a lot… Now I don’t at all.

I don’t always remember what I did in what tab… When I want to go back. I want to be able to do so without trying to remember which tab I was in last (That is part of the “getting lost” thing) then having to click on that tab and THEN click on the back button…

  • Karen

It’s private or doesn’t exist.

<https://xojo.com/issue/30602>

Public now - there’s no reason it should have been private

[quote=45430:@Karen Atkocius]I find that completely unintuitive for an IDE … and I think most do too… In RS I used back a lot… Now I don’t at all.

I don’t always remember what I did in what tab… When I want to go back. I want to be able to do so without trying to remember which tab I was in last (That is part of the “getting lost” thing) then having to click on that tab and THEN click on the back button…[/quote]

My thoughts exactly. I can’t even use the back button, which definitely slows down my work within Xojo. At least the option for it to work globally or per-tab should make most users happy.

I just posted a description on <https://xojo.com/issue/26799> as I was reading that case

I had given quite a long explanation why the “tab specific” implementation is indeed wrong, in this report: <https://xojo.com/issue/29324>

The reason for why Xojo’s behavior is plain wrong is that the explanation that Norman and Paul keep giving us is on a bad association with Safari, and they do not even realize that, apparently:

Whereas Safari’s tabs of web pages are indeed independent of each other, those in Xojo projects are not. If we use an action that looks up a method, and if that moves us to a DIFFERENT tab, then there should be no doubt that a Back button brings us back to where we previously moved away from, EVEN IF it was from a different tab. Anything else is just ignoring the usual workflow a programmer goes thru. And the fact that I’m not the only one saying so here and Feedback should open Xojo people’s eyes instead of keeping them blindfolded by referring to a concepts that’s not applicable here.

Furthermore, even Xcode, which is a much better analogy to this issue than Safari is, this works better: Xcode doesn’t switch Tabs when looking up identifiers (with cmd-click), so Xcode can adhere to the concept of tab-specific history because there, it doesn’t cause the grief that Xojo is doing to us.

In short, Xojo is justifying a non-working concept with a rule that applies well to some other context.

But Thomas… IT WAS DESIGNED THAT WAY… SO IT CAN’T BE WRONG… YOUR PERCEPTION OF WHAT IS “RIGHT” IS INCORRECT (sarcasm mode off)

Saying “will it every work properly” assumes that what we designed & implemented is somehow “improper”
Further that this behavior is “wrong” (as in NOT correct like saying 2+2=6)

It’s not as you desire or expect - but thats no more “right” than how it works today
Its your preference - and some others prefer it differently.
Neither is “right” or “wrong” - they’re just different

Feature requests to alter its behavior are in order
That said Jay Madren DID file an actual bug report about how it works currently

Right or wrong, I can’t imagine a workflow where tab-specific histories are preferable.