Comments on look and feel

[Kylotan]

Just a couple of opinions on the look of RC2, hopefully things which might be addressed for 1.0 final.

1) the 'close tab' button seems to be new. It takes up a whole column of space on the screen here, between the manager panel and the editor panel. I'd rather not have the button at all than have it waste space like that. A context menu on the tabs would suffice, if it's not practical to put the close tab button on the right like Firefox (or on each tab, like KDE apps).

2) There are too many bevels and borders... for example, between the bottom of the editor text and the top of the messages text is a scroll bar (unnecessary in this case since the file is not wider than the screen), then the outside of the tabcontrol/workbook has a reasonably large bevelled border, then there's the bevelled splitter, and then the border of the messages window tabcontrol. The projects pane is even worse as there's an extra border between the scrollbars and the edge of the tabcontrol. If it's possible to reduce some of this clutter, it will look better as well as freeing up some extra space.

3) The splitters don't have a different icon when the mouse pointer is over them. Combined with the issue above, this makes it a little harder than it should be to find what to drag when you want to resize the windows.

4) The toolbars are partially obscured for me - specifically it appears that the bottom of the buttons overlaps the bottom bevel of the toolbar. This happens for me whether I use 32x32 or 16x16 icons.

All of this is on WinXP SP2, by the way.

[thomas]

1) the 'close tab' button seems to be new. It takes up a whole column of space on the screen here, between the manager panel and the editor panel.

You have to explicitely enable this button, it does not show by default. If you don't like it, you can turn it off in Settings --> Environment --> View. There is a plugin available which lets you close tabs via a context menu, though I forgot the download location (search forums). In-tab close buttons have been in development for a while, but aren't ready to be included in a release yet.

2) There are too many bevels and borders... for example, between the bottom of the editor text and the top of the messages text is a scroll bar (unnecessary in this case since the file is not wider than the screen), then the outside of the tabcontrol/workbook has a reasonably large bevelled border, then there's the bevelled splitter, and then the border of the messages window tabcontrol.

You must have a particularly small screen if the bevels in Code::Blocks are a problem for you, they're really not big. Do you know that F2 hides/unhides the message pane, and Shift-F2 does the same with the manger? This frees a large screen area very quickly (the message pane can be configured to auto-hide, too).
The subject of horizontal scroll bars a matter of taste. My sources regularly have long lines, so I am very grateful about a horizontal scroll bar.
The spacing inside the message pane's individual tabs is individually different, this depends mostly on the respective wxWidgets containers used, little one can do about this (but it doesn't look wrong to me, anyway).

The projects pane is even worse as there's an extra border between the scrollbars and the edge of the tabcontrol.

Not what I see on my Windows XP machine. The projects pane is actually quite perfect. There is no visible gap except the widget's 1px border.

3) The splitters don't have a different icon when the mouse pointer is over them.

You mean a mouse-over cursor? Yes, that is true for the vertical splitter and the message pane's.

4) The toolbars are partially obscured for me

This may be a corrupted .cb_layout.bin file (found in your home folder). Try if it is better after deleting this file (or does obscured mean they don't fit on the screen?).

[Kylotan]

1) the 'close tab' button seems to be new. It takes up a whole column of space on the screen here, between the manager panel and the editor panel.

You have to explicitely enable this button, it does not show by default.

If it's new in RC2, then it was shown by default in my installation. If it was in RC1, then perhaps I did enable it.

You must have a particularly small screen if the bevels in Code::Blocks are a problem for you, they're really not big.

1024x768, which is the most common resolution in use. It's not that these borders are a crippling disability, but they are dead space and they look ugly. I appreciate that this is partly because of wxWidgets.

The subject of horizontal scroll bars a matter of taste. My sources regularly have long lines, so I am very grateful about a horizontal scroll bar.

That's not the point. It's usually quite trivial for an application to show the scroll bar when needed and hide it when not. This is possible with the Scintilla control that is used here.

Not what I see on my Windows XP machine. The projects pane is actually quite perfect. There is no visible gap except the widget's 1px border.

This is what I see (magnified x2):



The projects window is top left, with an additional set of borderlines inside. This also shows the various other bevelled dividers that serve little purpose.

This may be a corrupted .cb_layout.bin file (found in your home folder). Try if it is better after deleting this file (or does obscured mean they don't fit on the screen?).

That data file really should not be dumped into that directory like that. Nor should the '.CodeBlocks' directory. But I suppose that's another thread...

Anyway,I deleted .cb_layout.bin, and it still looks like this:


Note the grey L-shaped line which presumably should continue on below the buttons.

[thomas]

If it's new in RC2, then it was shown by default in my installation. If it was in RC1, then perhaps I did enable it.

RC1 had it, yes.

It's usually quite trivial for an application to show the scroll bar when needed and hide it when not.

Again a matter of taste Personally I hate programs that which do that. But I see your point
One might make that configurable, maybe.

This is what I see (magnified x2)

These "bevels" are the borders of the dockable window, the contained scroll window, and the therein contained treeview window. With default XP style, it looks like this for me:

When I set Windows to "classic" style, I get the same as you do. No idea how one can change that really, though, each of these windows is needed for some functionality. It is strange that "classic" style draws extra borders, no idea why. The small gap between the horizontal and vertical splitter is probably not avoidable either, since these again are inside dockable windows.

Note the grey L-shaped line which presumably should continue on below the buttons.

Yes, that seems to be a drawing error. Sorry, misunderstood your issue in the first place.

That data file really should not be dumped into that directory like that. Nor should the '.CodeBlocks' directory.

Agreed, discussed many times in many places. Config file storage will be completely overhauled at some point in the future (including elimination of registry settings). For the present time, though, everybody is happy that config works without crashing. Making it pretty comes after fixing the show stoppers.

[mandrav]

Hi and thanks for the suggestions

That data file really should not be dumped into that directory like that. Nor should the '.CodeBlocks' directory.

Can you elaborate on this?
If we 're not allowed to write in the user's home dir, then where do you think is appropriate???

[Kylotan]

If we 're not allowed to write in the user's home dir, then where do you think is appropriate???

Inside the user's home dir is an 'Application Data' directory - a Codeblocks directory can go in there, and include all the relevant files. That works for WinXP, anyway - on Windows 98SE Application Data is inside the Windows directory. From what I remember, there's meant to be a variable you can use to get at this (eg. %USERDIR% or something) but it doesn't work properly on Win98SE, giving you the root directory.

[thomas]

It's %APPDIR%, and yes, it doesn't work reliably

[royalbox]

Regarding the user profile directory, perhaps this page on the MSDN might help.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/reference/enums/csidl.asp

CSIDL_PROFILE (0x0028)
    Version 5.0. The user's profile folder. A typical path is C:\Documents and Settings\username. Applications should not create files or folders at this level; they should put their data under the locations referred to by CSIDL_APPDATA or CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA.

These values supersede the use of environment variables for this purpose.

Regards, Bazz.

[Vampyre_Dark]

I agree on the horizontal scroll bar. I really hate looking at it, and in other editors I have used it's appearance as a nice visual cue that one of my lines has gone too long. I know when it disapears that my lines are okay. Another thing is that I can't get rid of the ugly last grey column to the left. I know it's used for bookmarks and debug lines, but I use neither.

They are no big issues for me though.

[mandrav]

Another thing is that I can't get rid of the ugly last grey column to the left

If you 're talking about the gutter line to the right, go to "Settings->Editor->Gutter" and set "Mode" to "None".
If that's not it, which line are you talking about?

[Vampyre_Dark]

Another thing is that I can't get rid of the ugly last grey column to the left

If you 're talking about the gutter line to the right, go to "Settings->Editor->Gutter" and set "Mode" to "None".
If that's not it, which line are you talking about?

The one for bookmarks and debugger lines. on the left. When you turn everything off, this is the one that remains. It's a grey bar about 2 characters wide.