Norman, if you officially say that the navigation issue will be fixed in the next few months than many users will be satisfied.
Fixing it means that the navigator will be replaced with something easier or more reliable. E.g. showing only objects like proposed by Bob.
I think Xojo Inc. does not realize, that the whole business of many of us depends on the IDE’s future . Many small companies and freelancers need certainty to decide how to move on.
You have to admit, the company has been fairly mum on the issue. Several times in these forum discussions on this issue, a Xojo’s engineer’s response was “but we work in it all day”. And one of your third party vendors (Brad), thinks the Navigation problem is a non-issue and we all just need training.
Do you think training is going to get everyone, including the Xojo developers, over the hump? I certainly don’t think so. If you guys have a plan for fixing this and a rough time, great, just state so, and I’ll be more than patient and see what you can come up with. But when I read comments like “but it also doesn’t make this an “OMG drop everything” kind of priority”, it makes me a bit skeptical that you see the scope of the problem.
[quote=26487:@Brendan Murphy]
Frankly, this isn’t an opinion survey, but users are expressing dissatisfaction with the design and that it is having an impact on their productivity. It doesn’t take a x-ray vision to figure that out.[/quote]
You’re right it’s not an opinion survey
Preface users are expressing dissatisfaction with the design with SOME and you’ll be correct
We have a huge pool of users that have not said anything one way or the other and we have a fair number that like the new design - flaws & all
[quote=26478:@Steve Williams]That’s why I asked this question:
“Or do they think they can tinker with it enough that it will satisfy the complaints”
[/quote]
It’s a clown question. Of course they are going to make incremental improvements to the navigator rather than “do what the community demanded” in an ill-advised feature request. If they did what Bob requested, they’d be dead in the water for 6 months or more, yet again.
Harald, if your code is a valuable business asset, the best advice I can give you is to figure out how the new IDE can work for you and be patient and they work out some minor annoyances. There is plenty of evidence in Feedback that they have been doing just that. For example, I posted an implemented FR I filed awhile back for running in a new tab, so your debug session doesn’t get buried in the navigator. There is no need for them to do anything radical.
[quote=26490:@Harald Schneider]Norman, if you officially say that the navigation issue will be fixed in the next few months than many users will be satisfied.
Fixing it means that the navigator will be replaced with something easier or more reliable. E.g. showing only objects like proposed by Bob.
I think Xojo Inc. does not realize, that the whole business of many of us depends on the IDE’s future . Many small companies and freelancers need certainty to decide how to move on.[/quote]
I certainly cannot say what you’re expecting - if you’ve been around you know we can’t / won’t say “issue X will be fixed in the next release” or how it will be fixed.
We are dealing with issues we know of and are contemplating other changes to the IDE to improve the experience.
That’s about a s official as I can be.
Not sure what your day job is, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it is not “Inspirational Counselor”. Of course they are going to make a lot adjustments to it, a number of things can stand some improvement. But the “Getting lost in the Navigator in big projects” issue is going to be a tough nut to crack with just tinkering. It’s going to require a bigger hammer, IMO.
[quote=26479:@Norman Palardy]Do you honestly believe we don’t see or experience the problem ?
WE DO use the IDE all ay every day on a project that is quite sizable. Yes the navigation is an issue.
But fix navigation issues or crashes & assertions ?
We chose to fix the assertions & crashes first (thats a big chunk of what got fixed in R2 along with some other bugs)[/quote]
OK, according to Thom you guys knew and discussed the scalability issue in the navigator from the beginning. Thom said Geoff overrode Thom’s acknowledgement of the problem and that was that. Knowing of the scalability issue you guys went ahead even when the alpha and beta testers told you the same things and famoulsy told Bob he wasn’t a normal user. Now you come out here and say, “Do you honestly believe we don’t see or experience the problem?” Of course you did see the problem, but choose to go ahead with it anyways! I am saying you guys don’t have the proper sense of urgency. Geoff having a one-on-one with Bob says one thing, but you poo-pooing overwhelming negative results here sends an entirely different message.
Actually if we fix some of the bugs that exist a bunch of what causes the “I get lost feeling” gets addressed without making other huge changes.
One of the issues is that when you change the name of something the navigator pops to the very top of the project so now you’ve lost you place. And this sort of thing happens under several other situations.
If the navigator didn’t do that then you would not “get lost”.
Quite honestly I’m not going to go into history or internal discussions as thats internal and private.
Memories are always slightly rose colored.
Ask Bob - this is far from the first one
Overwhelming ?
Again “some users have reported” - 4-5% that have voiced a negative opinion - sadly we have no feedback case for “Dont touch the Navigator” to know how many disagree with you.
I doubt anyone would elect someone on an “overwhelming” majority of 4-5%
And I’m not “poo-pooing” anything - you’re misreading what I wrote.
What I said was this is NOT the highest priority item we have.
Yes we know there are issues - some we’ve already dealt with.
Yes we know there are other things we can do.
Disagree. That is just one of the many ways I get lost. Sometimes I need to get somewhere, and all these classes and modules and controls are all open to various degrees, and have to really think about where things are, and usually have to start closing things to make the list more manageable in my search. And all that involves a lot of clicking and scrolling.
So I am guessing you guys have a plan. I guess there is nothing to do but see what comes of it.
I did say One of the issues is that not “the only way you get lost is…”
Sure - I’m well aware of that.
I tend to work a lot like I did in the ld IDE - I open everything into a new tab.
Then my first tab is still my “project view” and I use the filter field a lot to get to the things I want quickly - then open that in a new tab.
I tend to click & scroll a lot less by using the filter.
[quote=26501:@Norman Palardy]Quite honestly I’m not going to go into history or internal discussions as thats internal and private.
Memories are always slightly rose colored.[/quote]
These things were spoken on a public forums from the primary people involved.
[quote=26505:@Brendan Murphy]These things were spoken on a public forums from the primary people involved.
[/quote]
Drama is so much fun!
Minus the other engineers and Geoff - so you have one of 7 or 7 people involved.
I doubt any of us is willing to comment as those discussions should have been kept private & confidential as they are internal company business not meant for public disclosure - regardless of one’s current or former employment status.
I can tell you what my employment contract states in this regard.
When your best arrow in the quiver is to manually type the name of a method or object each time you need to find it, it tells me the design is flawed.
[quote=26507:@Norman Palardy]Minus the other engineers and Geoff - so you have one of 7 or 7 people involved.
I doubt any of us is willing to comment as those discussions should have been kept private & confidential as they are internal company business not meant for public disclosure - regardless of one’s current or former employment status.
I can tell you what my employment contract states in this regard.[/quote]
On Bob’s log Thom wrote the following…
“Ive been very silent on this issue, but I kind of want to share something about the history of the navigator. I dont want to go into too much detail, but the navigator did not turn out how I originally intended. My inspiration for the navigator was Codas sidebar. In that sense, it would have worked much more like the Real Studio project tab. Putting all the code content inside each project item was an experiment, but after some time well before the alpha it became clear to me that there would be too much content. Wed be introducing too many hierarchical levels. I was primarily concerned with horizontal space and not having enough room for item names, but it was obvious vertical space could be an issue as well. Geoff and I discussed it, but I wasnt successful in making my case.”
Find it once & open it in a tab like in the old IDE ?
I think the big issue here is that once you do this ANY tab CAN navigate anywhere - thats because locked tabs are not working as intended.
If they were they’d behave more like the old IDE where a tab focused on one item and could not be moved to focus on something else.
No ?
If they were then you could open that item in a tab and just bring the tab to the foreground when you needed to look at that item again & again.
[quote=26510:@Brendan Murphy]On Bob’s log Thom wrote the following…
[/quote]
Yes - I’ve read that 
And this is still only his recollection of all the discussions we had.
Thom should know better than to discuss the internal communications of any current or former employer with anyone who shouldn’t be privy to them.
You have proved my assertions in this conversation.
R2 fixed mostly outright crashes & project corruption bugs first since we figured NOT actually wrecking peoples projects was a tad more important that the navigation (which can be frustrating but doesn’t wreck your project)
If you’d like me to leave in the project corrupting ones I’ll special case it and leave those in for you and fix them for everyone else.
Sound good to you ?