Nick Ager wrote:

Hi,

What are the pros and cons of the different code browsers I see in my image (it's based on Damien Cassou's squeak-web-95-2.zip). I see:

• Browser (appears to be the default)
• HierarchyBrowser
• OBSystemBrowser
• ShoutOmniBrowser
• eComspletionOmniBrowser
• Tric-RefactoringBrowser
• WhiskerBrowser
• OmniBrowser

It really depends on your preference. Try them; I've been Squeak for quite a few years and I've only really ever needed to use the standard Browser.

The Browser and HierarchyBrowser are standard tools in a standard image.

I don't know much about the OmniBrowser, but I think it's an intelligent re-design of the standard browser in that it looks the same but works much more intelligently under the covers. I think people use it as a starting point for developing experimental browsers.

Shout is a package that gives you syntax hilighting, so the ShoutOmniBrowser is Shout plus the OmniBrowser.

eCompletion is a package that gives you keyword completion (ala other IDEs)... ditto for eCompletionOmniBrowser.

The WhiskerBrowser has a completely different UI - some people swear by it.

The ones I haven't mentioned are the ones I don't know anything about.

I find myself switching between different browsers and not finding one which provides a superset of browsing functionality.I feel must be missing a trick. Is there a prefered browser amoungst more experienced users?

Again, I just use the standard browser. Personally I'm dissatisfied with it because it's completely non-obvious as to how you're meant to use it - even after a few years, I still haven't worked out what the "standard" way of defining a new method is; usually I just cheat and modify an existing method with a new name.

You'll also find that a lot of the functionality you need is done in other places in the image. The biggest "Aha!" moment for me was discovering alt-n ("find senders of...") and alt-m ("find implementers or...") - select text and press those keys.

How do I register a prefered browser as the default for alt-b and tools tab->browser?

I've just had a look in the image. This is what I did:

1. I vaguely recall being asked what "Tool set" I wanted to use at some stage, so I opened up my bog-standard browser :-) and tried to find any class with the word "Tool" in the name. I saw a class called "ToolSet" so I looked at that.

2. "ToolSet" has no instance methods, so I looked at the class methods.

3. This looks like it - there's a method called #browse:selector:, so I looked at that. That calls the method "default" which isn't there.

4. Looking for the implementation of "default", I opened up a hierarchy browser on ToolSet and looked up the inheritance hiearchy. I found the implementation in AppRegistry. That calls "self askForDefault".

5. I look at the implementation of "askForDefault" in the same class. At a brief glance, it has UI code in it, so I try calling it:

ToolSet askForDefault.

There you go.

Michael.