Author Topic: Usability improvements  (Read 3398 times)

Offline Zenju

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Usability improvements
« on: May 21, 2011, 06:49:06 pm »
Hi there,

overall usability of Code::Blocks is already very(!) good, way better than Visual Studio in this regard. Only shortcoming is auto-complete, which I acknowledge is a very hard problem.
Nevertheless, the place where most gains in productivity can be gained is the thing a programmer spends most of his time with: writing code.

Here are a few suggestions that will close the gap from "very good" to "near optimal":

1. Often some rows need to be rearranged or swapped. Notepad++ offers shortcut
CTRL + SHIFT + UP/DOWN
Once used to it, it is VERY hard to live without :)
Having also support for moving multiple rows at once would be the icing on the cake.

2. Next to writing code, the second most important task is adapting project configuration. Buttons that allow this in a one-click operation for "properties..." and "build options..." are desperatively needed.

3. Double clicking is not working correctly if a dialog other than CB is currently having focus (this may be a bug). So if the focus is not on CB I need to click trice ;) Surely not the intention of the inventor.

4. An up to date source code formatter. There is this Astyle plugin but it's really outdated. But more importantly it doesn't support all formatting options that Astyle offers. But I admit demand is not that pressing as this behavior can be emulated by including Astyle as "external tools". Still it would be nice to have this built into the IDE in its full glory, since it's already partially there.

Best regards, ZenJu

Offline Zenju

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Re: Usability improvements
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2011, 09:44:19 pm »
Another usability impediment I forgot to mention:

The newer Nightly builds allow scrolling through open file tabs via the mouse button. While this may be useful to some people, it has a severe drawback for keyboard affine users:

When I click on one of the tabs via mouse, and then want to scroll down the file via "page down" or "ctrl + page down", what it does instead is scroll through the tabs. This is really annoying each time it happens. But a simple redirection of keyboard commands to scroll the file instead tabs will probably fix it.

Thanks, ZenJu