On Sep 12, 2004, at 5:10 AM, Avi Bryant wrote:
Colin,
We loaded this here in Camp Smalltalk and took it for a drive. Updates didn't work at all, at first - we had to change "OBBrowser allInstancesDo:" to "OBBrowser allSubInstancesDo:". And the text pane doesn't seem to update at all without manually re-selecting the current method (which also means that it doesn't complain with the thick red line if you have concurrent edits in different browsers). Apart from that, it's been very solid, and seems to include all the menu items, d'n'd, and so on that I would expect - it now feels like a finished browser rather than a proof of concept.
Ok, updates are now fixed - each browser subscribes to the SCN, and refreshes via morphic stepping.
http://monticello.wiresong.ca/ob/OB-Standard-cwp.18.mcz
One other complaint that came up is that the enabled/disabled status of the buttons isn't easy enough to tell at a glance. However, I think the new way they work was a good choice - having the button row constantly changing underfoot was disconcerting, and this makes the UI feel much more stable. For some reason the chasing browsers still discombobulate me a bit in that same way, but I'm not sure how to fix that, and it probably just takes getting used to.
Yeah, I agree. I think what's needed is different colours. On my list.
It would also be great if the shortcut keys (alt-m, alt-n, alt-b, etc) could be (optionally?) modified to bring up the OB instead of the standard tools. Otherwise it's really hard to stay in OB for long. If that can be hacked in easily, I think I'll try adopting this as my main browser and see how I do.
Another good point. I'll investigate that too.
I'm moving in the next few days, so I might not be able to post to SM soon, but I expect to move to beta in the next week or so.
Colin