ZeroBrane Studio Lua IDE v0.50 is out

[paulclinger]

I know nothing of wxWidgets so I might just be talking out of my ass but wouldn't it be possible to create a button that is dynamically assigned a label according to the open project folder? Then just display that button and show the file tree below it. Similar to what is currently done but more integrated. On click, the button prompts for a new project folder.
Doesn't have to be like Brackets, even so there has to be a way to make it more coherent.

This is interesting. I might have misunderstood, but I have been thinking about something similar, but without a dropdown. I can make the top folder icon to look a bit different and when clicked, it would display a popup menu with the list of projects and an item to add a new project (Choose...). Would this help?

The reason I like the current menu is that you can switch regardless of where you are in the filetree as any item includes the popup. Maybe we are overthinking this and there is already too many options for a project switching that is rarely used?

[OttoRobba]

I think I understand what you mean but leaving that for an icon might be too cryptic. And yes, we might be overthinking it.

As you point out, the current right-click functionality is plenty, it is really easy to change projects and work with files and folders. What I suggest is this:



Mixing with what you said, basically on click could reveal a dropdown of current projects, with the last entry being "open another project" or simply remove the arrow and have it open the "Open new project" dialog. The latter is cleaner and easier probably.

[paulclinger]

I think I'll need to sleep on it. One of the reasons to remove the dropdown was that the content of the dropdown couldn't be wider than the dropdown itself (at least on Windows), which created problems with recognizing directories when only the beginning of the path is displayed. This lead to the abbreviation logic, but I wasn't quite happy with the solution.

It's possible to remove the dropdown and make it a button (or something similar) that would activate a popup with a list of projects (as you suggested), but it's not too different from the current solution and I'm not sure how much it helps with the discoverability. I can highlight the first row with the project directory and then activate the popup, but it may be difficult to make it more button like.

I have some other ideas to try, but I'll probably gather more feedback for a day or two. I'm getting adjusted to the updated UI and would like users to use the file menu a bit more as I plan to add more features to that menu that users are asking about: Show/Hide files with a particular extension, Duplicate file, Set/Unset as starting script, and some others.

Maybe we need something opposite to what we discussed? How about a hotkey that opens a popup menu for the current file in the filetree to make all this functionality available from the keyboard? If the current file is not in the filetree, then open it for the project itself...

> RGB(100,100,100) or #676767 basically. RGB(80,80,80) should work fine too, if you want it a bit darker.

Is this for the text foreground "text = {fg = {100, 100, 100}, bg = {250, 250, 250}},"? the current value is {64, 64, 64}, so you are making it lighter, not darker. Or did I misunderstand?

Thank you very much for thinking through these options and coming up with all these good suggestions and mock ups!

[Mercurialol]

Editor looks blurry and pixelated on my MacBook retina display

[paulclinger]

Editor looks blurry and pixelated on my MacBook retina display

Mercurialol, try setting

Code: Select all

hidpi=true

in the config: http://studio.zerobrane.com/doc-faq.htm ... isplay-osx

[OttoRobba]

Maybe we need something opposite to what we discussed? How about a hotkey that opens a popup menu for the current file in the filetree to make all this functionality available from the keyboard? If the current file is not in the filetree, then open it for the project itself...

This could be nice but I don't know how it would solve the project conundrum - I might have to see it to understand.
Hotkeys are great for when the user already knows how to work with the software but otherwise, mouse input is important.

> RGB(100,100,100) or #676767 basically. RGB(80,80,80) should work fine too, if you want it a bit darker.

Is this for the text foreground "text = {fg = {100, 100, 100}, bg = {250, 250, 250}},"? the current value is {64, 64, 64}, so you are making it lighter, not darker. Or did I misunderstand?

Well that is completely odd. If I take a screenshot and color pick the average color from the letters, Gimp shows me an RGB value of 135,135,135. If I go for the darkest spots on letters, than yes, it is RGB 100,100,100. It probably needs to be set to fg = {65, 65, 65}.
Sample below to show what I mean:

[paulclinger]

> This could be nice but I don't know how it would solve the project conundrum - I might have to see it to understand.
> Hotkeys are great for when the user already knows how to work with the software but otherwise, mouse input is important.

Ok, one more update for the toolbar. I refreshed the icons and added dropdown to the new icon that sets the project directory. The dropdown gives you the list of all recent projects with one click. See this comment for details: https://github.com/pkulchenko/ZeroBrane ... t-41882770

> It probably needs to be set to fg = {65, 65, 65}. Sample below to show what I mean:

Right, I do see it on the screenshot, but does this mean I don't need to change it? The current value is {64, 64, 64} and you suggest to set it to {65, 65, 65}, but this is about the same value?

[OttoRobba]

I thought the value was 100,100,100, my bad.
Yeah, maybe no change is needed - it looks fine on Windows but weirdly light on Ubuntu.

The dropdown does seem to work out fine.

[paulclinger]

Folks, I've completed the batch of UI changes we've been discussing and also added bookmark support. Everything has been merged into the 'master' branch. There are few other small changes planned before the next release, but any major changes will go to the next version.

Thank you for all the feedback and support!

[OttoRobba]

Thank you for all the feedback and support!

Thanks for the great tool!

Be sure to add a few screenshots with the new ui changes on the github/homepage, it looks way better than before