[squeak-dev] Default Window Sizes

Chris Muller ma.chris.m at gmail.com
Sat Nov 10 22:45:23 UTC 2018


>> Also, please do not change the #defaultExtent to your own personal
>> preference but move toward making it user-settable.
>
> IMO the *right* way to do this is simply to remember the last size when the window was last closed.  This was what I added for the debugger and I love it.  It's simple and convenient.

I can appreciate it as a reasonable behavior and an efficient way for
the user to "set" their preferred extent for a window, by type.

However, it also brings context-specific resizes of prior windows to
future windows.  For example, just because I maximize an inspector to
do a one-time interrogation of one specific object doesn't mean I want
the next inspector to open that large.  Sure, I can easily size it
back down, but by then it has distracted me from what I was thinking
about to have to think about something else.  So, I think there can be
a benefit to having a simple defaultExtent and sticking with it.

The good news is, since this is Smalltalk, I'm confident we can come
up with a simple way offer both strategies, probably even by window
type.

Remembering the last also may not be very intuitive from the sense
that people don't think of "closing a window" as a way to "configure"
something -- usually they just want to close the window.  So, it may
useful to also an entry to the window menu.

We definitely need to do something, because these vast swaths of
useless whitespace covering my background windows drive me nuts!   :)

 - Chris


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