On 31/01/2008, Francisco Garau <francisco.garau at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the old MorphicWrappers package you could "tear-off" a method or a class
> from the browser. They were a mixture of a bookmark (because they were
> always there using very little screen space) and a browser (because you
> could edit the code there).
>
> The MorphicWrapper for a class (seen as the little orange boxes in the
> screenshot) also acted as bookmarks. You would normally put several classes
> on the desktop, send the message "browse" to some of them and get the usual
> browser. Once you identified the interesting method, tear it off and leave
> it on the desktop. I would accomodate these methods from different classes
> in a similar order as they appear in the debugger. I loved that.
>
> I hope the screenshot clarifies what I am trying to say.
>
> Cheers,
> Francisco
>

Yes, tearing-off it's very useful for saving desktop space. It would
be good to have a 'bag' window, where i can drag and drop different
methods, so they will be kept in single window with a single
scrollbar.

I'm against 'many windows' work style. Because you spending too much
time of managing them on screen.
For example, in screenshot you taken, when i want to tear-off 3rd
method, and place it on desktop to see all 3 methods, i'll need to
spend time dragging/resizing windows.

And if you open more than 10 browser windows, they simply can't fit on
the screen,  making a mess of your desktop. In most cases, i found
that opening new browser window with interesting method/class is
faster than searching all open windows to get back to that
class/method.
It's because browser window designed as standalone unit of
information, and without any means of having navigation between them.


About browser window contents:
let's analyze for a moment, how much time we spending interacting with
different lists while working:
- package list mainly it's used when i setting up my work space. I
going to find package i'm currently working on and then clicking way
through it to find interesting piece of code/class. My POV, showing a
list of packages in each browser window is a waste of screen space. In
regular work it's used very rarely, that it's not worth of space it's
occupying.

- classes list. Again, when i focused on something, i need to refer
only to couple of classes (in most cases these classes located in
different packages/categories). So, again, it would be better in
having own, custom class list, which i can populate and browse them
when i need to, instead of having list of all classes , where i need
only couple of them from each category.

- method categories and method lists. These list are used most
frequently, and i think only these lists worth occupied space.

And finally, all these 4 lists can be merged in single tree view and
showed as separate window, so you interact with it only when you need
it, leaving the rest of screen space free to other tasks.

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.