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Eclipse 4diac Wiki/4days Of 4diac/Usability Session 2019
At the 2019 4days of 4diac we had a dedicated session on usability issues of 4diac IDE. The following points where identified:
Contents
FBN Editor
- Palette
- Double-click on type => open type editor
- Use type-specific icons like in system explorers type library
- Allow comments on everything
- At least inputs/outputs of FB instances are missing
- Allow attributes on everything
- Attributes, which are user-defined metadata as key-value pairs
- "Attributes" tab in the property pane
- Do not adjust FB size to title size -> done in [1]
- Make FB titles multi-line
- ... or use smart truncation: ellipsis in the middle, with full name tool-tip
- Mouse interaction with FBs is too overloaded
- This is somewhat by design, but still worth improving
-
FB rename mode only triggers when clicking the title twice (like windows explorer rename, not double-click)-> done in [2] - Open instance viewer/type editor on double click outside of ports/title
- Maybe type editor as a context menu entry instead?
- Improve literal value editing for input ports
- Add context menu entry for input ports: "set literal value"
- Fix position of empty "literal value" edit box
- Popup tooltip with port comment and type syntax/example
- Use inline Xtext editor for syntax-checking
- Improve visualisation for drag&drop errors (esp. connections)
- Popup tooltip explaining why a given target is not a valid drop site
- Do this while dragging is in progress, or after dropping at invalid site
- TODO Offer an alternative to the palette
- double click on empty space opens textbox that searches through types
- popdown-completion for search term
- history of past blocks when search term is empty
Type Editor
- Improve mass creation of ports
- Existing workflow: use property sheet to create many instances quickly
- Problem: changing type on every port via mouse is tedious
- Suggestion: change "Type" column to use a combo-box with auto-complete or a cell-editor instead of the current popup list
- "Edit Events" property sheet: rename "Inputs" labels to "event inputs"
- Improves visual distinction between "Edit Events" and "Edit Data"
- Same for "Outputs" table
- Use an adaptive layout for input/output property tables
- Change to a vertical arrangement (top inputs/bottom outputs) for people dragging the property pane to the right window edge
- Maybe use pane aspect ratio to decide?
System Editor
- "Attributes" property sheet should use new add/delete/reorder widget
Resource View
- Boxes around individual applications
- Rationale:
- No overlap => resource view becomes much more usable
- Different visual => less likely to confuse app editor and resource editor
- Draw a shaded box around/behind each application
- Nested boxes for subapps
- Separate application boxes
- Allow to collapse application boxes
- Rationale:
System Explorer
- Add a search field
- Contra: use eclipse's global search instead
- Split type library into read-only standard library and custom types
- two predefined subfolders
Global UI
- Tab names have no visual hint for associated project
- Add documentation pane
- Could reside under palette, or shared with the outline pane
- Always shows information relevant to the most recently selected item
- Comment
- For types, subapps, FBs: Graphical view of interface definition for types
- For states inside ECCs: Algorithm preview
- For types, subapps, FBs: FBN/ECC outline?
- For systems/devices/resources: content outline?
- ... and other sources of documentation
- maybe add instance status summary as well?
- Rationale: property pane might have other information as default view
- FB count for systems/devices/resources
- user-specified attributes
- From anywhere, i.e. selection in palette, FBN editor, system explorer
- Add open-document view to the System Explorer pane
- Flat list of open tabs
- Grouped by project
- Add a "Useful tips" startup notification
- Not a dialog, that is too annoying
- Notification bar (like in browsers, MS Office) that closes itself after a while
- Add toolbar buttons and keybindings for direct creation of new types
- separate actions for basic, composite, SIFBs
- alternatively improve the type creation dialog to be less cluttered
- no scrolling through type list, just make the four types selectable with a simple click/keyboard action
- default folder something like "Type Library/Custom Types"
- use clicked folder as default folder if invoked via system explorer context menu
- Sort tabs by project and separate projects by a visual separator
Property Sheets
- Order of sub-tabs is inconsistent
- Order of sub-tabs should be optimised for usage frequency
- "Type Info" is the worst choice for default sub-tab
- Edit function of tables not discoverable enough
- "Click to edit" hint or something similar
- Might apply to other panes and dialogs as well
- Add keybinding to change property pane sub-tabs
- Also make sure the default focus after tab change is sensible