The Tool Palette: New vs. Old
Yesterday on my Q&A session for the Delphi Product Address at CodeRage II, folks mentioned to old tool palette and how they miss it. Quite frankly, I totally don’t get this. In my view, the new tool palette is something like 723 times better than the old one. Finding components is very, very fast. Arranging components like you want is very, very easy. Everything about it is just better.
Now, I get that for some reason some of you still like the old one, but frankly, I think it is because you are either completely resistant to change :-) or because you don’t know the features and advantages of the new tool palette.
As part of the discussion yesterday, I asked people to send me a video of them using the old component palette in way that is more efficient than using the new component palette.
So, pursuant to that, I’ve created a new Camtasia video that shows off the new Tool Palette.
The trouble, to my thinking, is the new IDE has a bimodal docking system (you can use everything floating or docked) that no matter whether floating or docked, grabs keyboard focus away from the new tool palette, and usually onto something else, like the properties inspector.
My workflow before relied heavily on the View Componets List. It could be done by keyboard accelerators, selecting a component and adding it to the form without using a mouse. It’s View->Components that I miss more than the old weenie sliding-sideways component palette.
Warren
November 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pmWow! Flabbergasting
November 27th, 2007 at 12:25 pmHi Nick -
i’ve had this discussion with a few colleagues, and let me give you my experience. I, like many others, have used Delphi since version 1.0. For the longest time, i stuck with Delphi 7.0 due to problems with Delphi 2005 and 2006. When Delphi 2007 came out, i took the plunge.
Initially, i simply hated the new pallette, but since i’ve grown to like it. I think the biggest problem i had with the new pallette was how much screen real estate it takes up compared to the old, compact horizontal pallette. With Delphi 7 and prior, you could configure the IDE layout and maximize the space on your screen for the code editor. Now with the ‘bulkier’ pallette, this is more of an issue. Granted, with dual screens, its a moot point, but you have to admit, the old pallette was a real space saver.
Alan
November 27th, 2007 at 12:33 pmI’ve been using D2007 for a few months and I still hate the new palette. I cannot stand things where menu items disappear depending on context. I’m like a piano player, I have to know where all the keys are. I don’t want some of the keys disappearing because I’m playing in E#, I’ll decide if I want something or not. It’s really irritating.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:52 pmI think Alan has a point here. When I started with Delphi 2005 I missed the old palette. But after learning Ctrl-Alt-P and incremental search, I do like it much better than the old one. But screen real estate is definitely an issue. On my notebook I have 1024×768 pixels. Now, I am running Delphi in a VM, so there goes some more space. I end up with an editor window the size of a postage stamp. How am I supposed to work with that? Yes, docking and tabbing helps, these moving (sliding? or whatever it is called) toolbars then make it actually bearable but still, somehow Delphi 7 is much more usable on that computer than Delphi 2007. Do I want to go back? No way! No refactoring? Never again!
November 27th, 2007 at 1:03 pmSteve –
I hate to break it to you, but the D7 palette does the same thing.
Thomas, Alan –
People complain about screen real estate — well, dock it on the side and let it slide out. Or simply make it small — with the filtering, you don’t need it to be big.
Nick
November 27th, 2007 at 1:08 pm@Steve: Just turn it off.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pmI really like the new palette. It’s so much faster. Just press CTRL-ALT-P and then start typing part of the component you need. Can’t figure out why somebody wants to use the old tool palette
Robin
November 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pmThe new tool palette rocks, I love the speed searching facility.
I do regular maintenance in D5 and it’s so much slower to work with…
Christian
November 27th, 2007 at 1:15 pmIf you want to show that searching for components by name using the keyboard is better with the new palette, that’s easy.
Now show me that form design is more predominantly a keyboard oriented activity than it was previously. Ooops. Failed.
So, acknowledging that form design is primarily (for most people in most situations) mouse driven, show me how to restore the new palette to a state where it is as well suited for mouse driven use… i.e. where the user has themselves organised the palette to suit them (which was always possible - no need to search through 30 "categories").
Oops can’t be done.
Yes the new palette is vastly improved, if your measure "improvement" against a simple set of functional changes delivered to specification.
But in actual use?
Nope.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:26 pmMaybe this is a market for a developer to make a Delphi Add-in that behaves like the old pallet. I took a little while to learn the new pallet, but I like it much better now.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:51 pmJolyon says it well; w/ D2007 you "gotta’ know the name" to do the CTRL-ALT-P.
Been using D2007 since April, still can’t get excited about it and loved the toolbar in D5. I could FIND things there.
Then, you get the flakey Object Inspector to view the control’s properties - it is not very stable. By the way, what is the short-cut key to get the control’s Name in Object Inspector? Never can find it since it is not bolded.
Part of the problem is that without the printed manuals there is no easy way to find out how to use some of the neat tools. I spend a lot of time googling.
Guess Tool Palette Wars will continue. If I’m writing something simple, I go back to D5; no Code Insight garbage collection, tools where they are EASY to find. I’m mouse driven and the old tool palette was great for that.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:54 pmNick,
November 27th, 2007 at 2:21 pmthe new palette is of course better, but after a long time with developing in Delphi classic (1-7) it takes some weeks to get the same speed of using…. Every developer should patient. I have changed and love in the meantime (not on the first hours ) the new IDE ….
Jolyon –
I think you didn’t watch the presentation?
Ways the new Tool Palette can be made faster for Mouse users:
1. You can select "Auto-Collapse Categories". This makes searching about the same as with the old palette.
2. You can easily rearrange components and add tabs to the palette to put your favorite, most common components right up front for easy finding with the mouse.
Nick
November 27th, 2007 at 2:23 pm3.
ok Nick, since you can’t see the opposing point of view, I am gonna briefly flip back an older, blunder voice for a minute, a maybe that will bring some perspective here. -> Who cares if you like it? You don’t pay for the product, WE DO.
Ok, done. Back to the newer, kinder, gentler voice:
Frankly, I still find it a step backwards. Yes, you can filter it, but it wastes a boatload of screen space, needs a pile of typing (it is just horendous to use), and frankly, Andreas Hausladen has proven that you can create an old style palette with filtering if that is your thing.
Yes, yes, I grant you that text filtering is handly, but only because the new palette is so hard to navigate otherwise. Frankly, with the D7 style palette and GExpert’s drop down menu for catagories, I could get anywhere I wanted FASTER than I could type a name usually. When I was really lost, I used the component finder that D7 had built in.
I seriously have never found any value in the current tool palette, no improvements in productivity, but I have found that it wastes a lot of space that I would rather have for form design and source code reading and I frequently have to let go of the mouse now to TYPE. All in all, a step backwards.
Which is a shame, because CodeGear could EASILY provide a toolbar that works just like the old tool palette and just let me pick between the two tool palette solutions for the option that works best for me.
Since we were originally told that the tool palette change was required for the dotNet WinForms designer, and since the WinForms designer is now dead to Delphi, it further underscores how possible this is.
So, maybe CodeGear could indeed bring back the old style tool palette and give its customers choice in how to be productive.
Or you could just keep insulting us to justify an unpopular feature…
November 27th, 2007 at 2:32 pm@Jim McKeeth:
Do you mean something like this:
http://andy.jgknet.de/dspeedup/images/DDevExtOldPalette.png
http://andy.jgknet.de/dspeedup/builds/DDevExtensions2007-06-17-0157.zip
November 27th, 2007 at 2:51 pmNick,
How much useability testing does CodeGear do? From this issue and the disaster with the Help it looks like it must be close to zero. This is probably the area that CodeGear needs to invest a lot of time and money in before anything is reworked. You need to listen to feedback from your users (boy, this is basic stuff - I shoudln’t be needing to say this) - and make sure you get an independent company to run the tests - don’t have the CodeGear programmers/designers/etc run them.
Cheers, Richard
November 27th, 2007 at 3:03 pmDo only I think that no one needs these "thousands" of components in one project? The Camtasia video showed this bloat very well. So you can only load these packages for your project that you actually use, making the component list much easier to handle.
In new version the space that was used for old tool palette on right of the toolbar is just wasted. Yes, you can dock and autohide and do everything with new palette, but on the other hand, it still requires more clicking to see the list, while at the same time space of old palette is staying there empty.
And, why do I need to double-click the categories to expand them? Single click with auto-exapand should be plenty (see IE favorites how it works).
November 27th, 2007 at 3:51 pmNick,
November 27th, 2007 at 5:18 pmTip: When you want to start a new project, you need to drop all that menu clicking, try: Ctrl-Alt-P and VCL [when you don’t have a project loaded or you’re looking at the code window/view] if you want a speedy way to get a new project going … old habits die hard
I really like the new palette. I think it is much easier to find what I want very quickly. I also like the ability to type in the palette, but then I have always been a keyboard person rather than using a mouse. When I want to do mainly coding then I hide the palette so the screen real estate has not been a problem either. I’ve been using the new palette for a couple years now and it is painful to go back to Delphi 7.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm… BTW, I think the new tool palette rocks!
November 27th, 2007 at 5:33 pmHi Nick,
The old component palette layout is superior to the new one, especially if you have a big wide screen display you can reasonably utilize a space above the form designer and at the same time find a better use for the space taken by the new palette.
Of course, since D7 palette was designed long time ago, there is some functionality (like filtering) missing, but it should be fairly easy for CodeGear to add it.
As a side note, I think the whole D1-D7 IDE design was vastly superior to the VS one and I believe that was one of the reasons which allowed Delphi to successfully compete with VS. The other reasons were superfast modern compiler, VCL library and a great third party component market.
Unfortunately at some point of time for unknown reason Borland stopped investing in their own technology reasearch. Both the native compiler technology and VCL library development was in kind of "suspended life animation" mode. On top of that Borland decided to change its superior IDE design and make a clone of Visual Studio’s one.
And now, on top of everything above ;o) Nick is trying to convince us that (instead of adding filtering to the old palette) it is better for us to get used to the new one, because if you use it for a long enugh time it is not that bad experience anymore.
The one argument one can make in favor of that philosophy is that once you give up and get used to the new IDE layout switching to Visual Studio is not that painful anymore.
Regards,
November 27th, 2007 at 5:37 pmZenon
Guys,
Let’s be honest, the new palette ROCKS. Going back to the D7 one is a HUGE no no. Only issue i have is to select a component and seeing how the branch I was selecting from disappears (collapses) after placing the component icon on the form, forcing me to look again for similar components on the same branch or having to type again the component i need it (I know i can copy/paste it, but, i was there a moment ago).
But in general, no worries nick, there is DEFINITELY more yeah, than naah.
Good job.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:27 pmAndreas Hausladen -> You do an excellent job proving that an old style palette can provide filtering. Sadly, because you have to do everything the hard way to get it to work, I found it was just too slow to work with (a problem, I might point out, codegear would not have, as they don’t have to do things the hard way as they would have direct access to the internals!)
Zenon makes the same point the rest of us do - we would rather loose 40 or 50 pixels in screen height than HUNDREDS of pixels of screen width - it just isn’t a good trade off (particularilly for cultures that writes and reads left to right and then top to bottom).
"because if you use it for a long enugh time it is not that bad experience anymore"
November 27th, 2007 at 6:34 pm"because if you use it for a long enugh time it is not that bad experience anymore" - I liked that one, it really does sum up the position Nick is trying to take. We aren’t spoiled children who don’t like our vegetables, there really is something to hate. Heck, it has been what? 3 major releases now and people are still riled up about it. That says something significant, something Borland ignored - something CodeGear should pay attention to!
(sorry, a misplaced < symbol apparently got turned into a tag, here is what was missing)
November 27th, 2007 at 6:36 pmNo, you’re right Nick, I didn’t watch the camtasia video.
I would be fascinated to learn that that clip showed me that you can do something that simply cannot be done… try docking the palette up out of the way somewhere where the IDE has no use for otherwise so that it takes up as little room as possible.
i.e. the same location as the old palette.
Can’t be done - instead just LOOK at all that lovely empty space in the main appbar…. lovely, uncluttered, completely unused… some might say… (gasp) .. "wasted" space.
The new palette cannot even dock into a screen-wide dock-site (if you have ANY side docks).
But I don’t need to regurgitate all the things that are wrong with it.
The very fact that CodeGear are STILL going on about it, trying to unilaterally declare the new palette as "Improved", and categorise any customer who thinks otherwise as just out and out wrong is indicative of the things that are still not right at CodeGear.
That and the "Look whats new since D7, no really, look this stuff really is new and it is better, no honestly, look, let me tell you again how new and improved it is… what you still don’t believe us…? here look, we’ll tell you again. and again. and again."
CodeGear: Where developers matter, as long as they agree with us.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:56 pmOK, coming from a /slightly/ different environment my first Delphi IDE was D3 from which I quickly moved to D7 … sorry to have to say this but, I hated the toolbar [there, I’ve said it] it was/is absolutely horrible. Thank gosh for IDE Palette Menu add-in from Ray Konopka at Raize Software. Guess I wasn’t alone. With the new IDE and toolbar, IDE Palette Menu can be retired - sorry Ray, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.
November 27th, 2007 at 8:40 pmI like the tool palette of marco cantu he’s using on the CodeRage 2, anybody here knows how did he configure it?
November 27th, 2007 at 9:07 pmEric, there are a lot of things you can do with the tool palette … have a look at the TCategoryButtons found in the Additional section. I believe that TCategoryButtons /is/ the tool palette but could be wrong.
What was it about Marcos that you liked … gradient colors? You can set them.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:18 pm… you can set them. Ooops.
Either right_click the tool palette and select Properties or
you can get to the same area by selecting Tools >> Options from the main menu and you’ll see it in the Environment Options section.
Select a Scheme or build your own.
Slick!
November 27th, 2007 at 9:35 pmTool palette, what tool palette? In D7 I’ve hidden the old style palette in favour of Andreas Hausladen’s component search box (DDevExtensions, Just wish I had a keyboard shortcut into the box. Now that we are about to move to d2007 I most properly will go for the same setup and keep the components palette hidden.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:42 pmI like the new toolpalette more than the old one. Especially with many thirdparty components the old tool palette is worse (Endless scrolling…).
November 28th, 2007 at 12:03 amTook some time to get used to the new one though, but I would not want to go back.
But I guess it all drills down to personal preference, so the DDevextension one is a good alternative for D7 tool palette guys.
I’m with SchalkV here. Andreas Hausladen’s tool is just great
November 28th, 2007 at 12:46 amWhy not make a lay-out option to transform the palette to a horizontal icon bar with tabs.. This was you can dock it above and below the text area and you have almost exactly the same lay-out as before rad studio.
One other thing:
The customer is always right :-). If you try to explain to a customer why you are right and he/she is wrong several times it is more indicative to you than to that customer. If so many customers want an option DO IT! or codegear will lose in the end.
NB: I like the new palette more than the old one.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:26 amIt’s nice to know that Nick and his team like the new tool palette but maybe he should ask the customers which user interface they prefer, the Delphi or the BDS interface. If the majority of users prefer the Delphi one then they should dump the BDS one.
Change is not always an improvement…
November 28th, 2007 at 1:32 am@ C Johnson:
"Heck, it has been what? 3 major releases now and people are still riled up about it. That says something significant, "
- No it does not. It just says that (i.e) the 10 people that hate it make more noise than the 1000 that love it. Because I like the new tool palette I usually just skip all those endless discussions (as most will, I suppose).
I have not heard a single argument that makes the old component palette better. All those things about i.e. wasted screen real estate make no sense, since about everything about the new palette is configurable. You can make the icons smaller, hide the captions, make categories autohide and then downsize the palette. Same goes for most other arguments about the old palette.
Just because the new tool palette does some things another way *by default*, that doesn’t mean you cannot change your settings to things you like better. If you don’t like the way it comes installed, change it! Heck, we’re developers, we’re used to tweaking everything in our machines, so what’s the problem?
Look, the new tool palette is not perfect. Agreed there are enough arguments to that and there’s room for improvement. (I myself use Ray Konopka’s add-on frequently.) But it IS definately better than the old one. I LIKE IT. So for the lovers of the old one, make your arguments alright, but stop pretending you’re representing all of us. You’re not.
@ SteveG:
November 28th, 2007 at 1:34 am"By the way, what is the short-cut key to get the control’s Name in Object Inspector? Never can find it since it is not bolded."
That one is spot on! I thought I was the only one that thought that was strange.
One more vote. I love the new tool palette and hope CodeGear doesn’t take time away from other things to re-implement the old one again. I think it’s a step backwards.
I also hope that the people who don’t like it as much are taking the time to see how configurable it is. If it really can’t be configured the way they need (or like), maybe some specific constructive QC requests are in order. If they still aren’t happy, there are always the third party alternatives.
Maybe it’s time to have a poll on the Developer Network page.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:36 amI don’t know what all the hoopla is about. I also hated the new tool IDE in the beginning (back in D8), but after working in Visual Studio, Delphi (8 then 2005, then the Turbos) I found myself using D6 less and less. It seems some people think Nick woke up one morning and thought "Gee, what can I do today to tick our customer’s off? I know, I’ll up the IDE!"
The IDE is/was been modeled from other succesful IDEs (Visual Studio? Yea, a few people are using it) that I’m sure had at least one or two usability tests over the years. I could be wrong on that.
If CodeGear really wants to take the next step in developer productivity, take the best features from CodeRush (and/or GExperts) and roll them into the IDE. Visual Studio’s Intellisense has really spoiled me and I’m dying without CodeRush’s auto-fill.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:42 am@Ritsaert Hornstra
I’m sorry but the customer is not always right, if you check what companies follows this motto you’ll notice they’re most often the absolute worst ones when it comes to customer service.
Check out http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/
I agree that the new tool palette takes too much space, but I also think most of the new stuff takes too much space. I’ve recently moved ALL the panes into a single tabbed one on the left side and I now use the keyboard to switch between pages. It took some time getting used to it but I no longer feel like the editor window is too small.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:58 amAlso, if you have a somewhat large screen, you can switch the tool palette to not show labels for the components, turn off autocollaps and simply expand the categories you normally use. This way I can see 200+ components on my screen at once (1050 pixels high).
I totally hated the old palette though so I’m probably a bit biased, it was super annoying at low resolutions to have to scroll through it to find components.
@Kevin Frevert
Good point about the Visual Studio IDE. I only wish the VS Toolbox was searchable or more configurable. Anyone know if the Toolbox in VS2008 has improved?
November 28th, 2007 at 3:27 amAfter a while, and setup the palette as Auto-Hide and learnd how to use short cut i’ve finally found this new pallette realy usable. I have to admin, even i hate it, that it becomes more productive when you now what you are searching for. If not… So i have to admit that i hate it but i’ll like it.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:27 am+1 vote for the new palette. Yes, it took me a little while to get used to it, but now NOTHING would persuade me back.
However, I think the colour and gradient ‘themes’ customization for it was a waste of effort. And, I don’t use the palette for new projects/files - only components.
The ability to add new categories is a nice feature which I’d missed. However, I think it would be more use for components to just be ‘copied’ into the user categories, rather than removed from the original. And, can you save and restore a category configuration? "Reset Palette" is a bit extreme…
Looking at http://andy.jgknet.de/dspeedup/images/DDevExtOldPalette.png reminds me of what a bad idea icons can be. I can’t tell what any of them might be.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:44 amHi,
I’m using D7 Enterprise and I have installed CodeRush which allows
multiple tab rows. I use a HP with a 1600×1200 resulotion and I have hundreds (maby more than 1000) of components installed. I actually have more than 100 tabs which means 6 full wide rows with tabs in this resulotion.
Although it is sometime hard to find the correct tab I think is much much better from the new tab. I think using CTRL-ALT-P to locate the component you want is really stupid. When I want to chose a component I think : now I want use a devexpress grid. This means I want to get to a DevExpressGrid to the DevExpress Tab.
I want to use TMS advbutton . I know that I must go to a TMS group and select a button from a TMS group. I want to create a report. I must go to Report Builder tab a select one or more controls.
I want to access a dataset with client dataset. I must go to a group named Delphi to a DataAccess group and select client dataset, datasetprovider and a datasource not a single control a set of controls.
The solution for me is obvious. Create a 2 level group category. The first must be a general category like Delphi, DevExpress, TMS, ReportBuilder, AlphaControls, WPTools, AnyDac, SIComponents and indide each category a group of tabs which contain components that belong in each category:
This means DevExpress must contain DevExpress, ExpressEditos, ExpressDBEditos, ExpressPrinting System, ….
TMS should contain TMS, TMS HTML, TMS Menus, TMS Grids etc
This way I could locate a component at once because that’s the way I’m thinking when chosing one.
I really cannot understand all the confusion.
Manolis Perrakis
November 28th, 2007 at 4:51 am@Roddy
November 28th, 2007 at 4:56 amNicks shows in the demo that you can copy between categories, try pressing the ctrl key while dragging.
I’m sick of all the whining about not-wanted improvements this year. Stick with the old if you must, but I love Delphi 2007, I love Office 2007 and I love Vista.
If you really, really need the old, ugly, hard-to-use, tool-palette, and cannot / will not use the third pary solution mentioned above, please spend just a little time customize the new tool-palette to reassemble something that looks like the old one, can be used like the old one, but is not a big pain in the * like the old one..
After a few mouseclicks (three checkboxes and a drag-drop operation) I have something that works and looks somehing like the old one, but have all the improvements that makes the new one far better then the old one:
http://www.vi-kan.net/toolpalette.jpg
And to you that complains about the search feature because you have to know the name of the component to use it: So it is much easier to know the position and the icon for it? You know - the searchfeature allows for partial matching, so if you search for ‘button’ you will get every single component that is named something with button. Then you can choose: regular button, bitbutton, speedbutton, radiobutton, raize-buttons, tms-butons.
The new tool palette is much more mousefriendlier to - could you use the scollwheel in Delphi 7? I don’t think so. You had to move the pointer to the scrollbuttons to scroll, and back to the tabs when you came to the end without finding what you wanted.
Before the switch to 2007 I used CompBAR. a must for all delphi
November 28th, 2007 at 5:11 amBefore the switch to 2007 I used CompBAR. a must for all delphi
November 28th, 2007 at 5:16 amBefore the switch to 2007 I used CompBAR. a must for all delphi
November 28th, 2007 at 5:23 amBefore the switch to 2007 I used CompBAR. a must for all pre-delphi 8 users. It gives you all the features of the new tool palette, and more:
http://www.geocities.com/componentbar/
I really love the new IDE, but a widescreen makes things easier. I decided to try out the new docked formdesigner to, and after a week I have get used to that too. I now find that one better than the old one to. And I can’t see why making the IDE work like every other IDE out there is a bad thing. It will make things a lot easier for those switching alot.
-Vegar
November 28th, 2007 at 5:29 amIt could be me, but I only use the tool palette approx. 0.25% of the time. So what’s the big deal anyway?
November 28th, 2007 at 6:52 am@Vegar
November 28th, 2007 at 6:59 amYou actually can use the mouse wheel to scroll the tabs in Delphi 7.
Last RAD Delphi version was 7, after that it has turned to be very very SAD. New component palette is way slower to use and F11/F12 doesn’t work as it used to do. Inserting events in alphabetical order is *censored*. My productivity has dropped significantly.
Maybe creating 1 form application with couple labels and edits isn’t slower than before but using it 8 hours a day to make a living isn’t fun anymore.
When we get fix for the embarrasing right click bug ???????
November 28th, 2007 at 8:27 amWhen I am working in the code (which is a large portion of the time), I turn the tool palette off. When I need it back, I just hover and it comes back. It doesn’t take up real estate that way.
I’ll admit when I went from D5 to D2006, I did not like the new toolbar for the reason of screen space. However, when I found that I could do filter searches and set the palette (and other sidebars) to slide away, I find myself loathe to go back to the old way.
I have two projects at work currently. One is a D2007 project, the other is a D7 project. I enjoy the D2007 much more. Another programmer I know is trying to talk his D7 office into D2007. They won’t switch until their current project is finished, but he talks up D2007 whenever he can.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:06 am@Peter B: Thanks - I missed that. When you hold the CTRL key down, the drag cursor reverts to a normal cursor, so I didn’t spot it.
- Roddy
November 28th, 2007 at 11:03 amThe new IDE and TP Rocks!. Yes, it changed (and some people don’t like changes), but is better.
keep up the good work (and the new pallete)
November 28th, 2007 at 12:15 pmIf you know what you’re looking for, then yes, the new tool palette is better. however, if you like to browse and see what components are in there (or find a component you do not know the name of), it’s not really that friendly. Personally, I have installed Ray’s IDE palette menu (http://www.raize.com/DevTools/Tools/PaletteMenu.asp) which is really great - for me, it sure is faster than Ctrl+Alt+P and then typing a name…
November 28th, 2007 at 1:41 pmStefan –
I find it easier for browsing. Simply select Expand All, and now you can browse all the components without having to switch or click any tabs. You just scroll. And you can use the wheel to scroll.
Seems easier to me.
Nick
November 28th, 2007 at 2:08 pmMaarten -> Yes, it’s true that the discontent does not represent everyone. That said, very few feature changes make as many people as unhappy for as long as the component palette has.
My point is that it would take a very minimal effort for CodeGear to provide it both ways.
I have worked with the new component palette extensively, and frankly, I just do not find it to work as efficently as the old palette does, regardless of how it is arranged due to to its mix of vertical and horizontal layout. It is a poor design that is ameliorated with filtering.
I have learned to live with the new style of the palette, but frankly I still hate it just as much today as I did the first time I saw it. If I could choose between the 2 tool palette styles, both with filtering, I can not imagine a single instance where the new style would be preferable, where as I could at least save screen space for form design with the old style.
Nick -> you do know you could browse and text search all the components in D7 too, right?
November 28th, 2007 at 3:17 pm@ SteveG and Maarten - Re: "Then, you get the flakey Object Inspector to view the control’s properties - it is not very stable. By the way, what is the short-cut key to get the control’s Name in Object Inspector? Never can find it since it is not bolded."
Forget the name getting bolded… how about getting the entire "Name" or "Value" highlighted (even easier to find)?
1) Press F11 till the Object Inspector has focus.
2) Use Tab to select Name column.
3) Begin typing the name of the property…
4) Tab again to enter the Value column.
Huge thanks to Malcolm Groves, where I saw this:
Incremental Searching in the Delphi Object Inspector
November 28th, 2007 at 4:14 pmhttp://www.malcolmgroves.com/ecoweb/articleview.aspx?ItemID=c0af98e4c72942cfa8018812bdec35dd
@ C Johnson
#15 post - "Frankly, with the D7 style palette and GExpert’s drop down menu for catagories, I could get anywhere I wanted FASTER than I could type a name usually."
#57 post - "My point is that it would take a very minimal effort for CodeGear to provide it both ways."
I do agree 100% with both of those statements… wishlist? I miss that simple button/select-what-you-want from the drop down panel and go.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:36 pmI’ve been using Delphi since 1.0, and I must say that I also thought the new palette was a huge step up in the usability department. The old toolbar was so difficult to navigate that I often had to use the component list. I think most of the arguments in favor of the old palette make zero sense. The argument about wasted screen real estate for example is impossible to understand since you can set the new palette to auto-hide so it takes up almost no screen real estate, whereas you always had to have the old toolbar on the screen wasting a ton of space.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:49 pmI wish the letters I typed would appear somewhere. That way I figure out I’d made a typo at the beginning of the component name before I’d typed out the entire name. Or I am missing something?
November 29th, 2007 at 12:19 amRegarding this very complex issue I think the following must be taken into account:
1. In order to check the efficiency of each toolbar you must have a lot of components installed in your computer. In my case I have more than 100 tabs which means more than 100 rows or shrinked row categories in the new system.
2. I think it is obvious that the best way is to find and choose the component you want by clicking and by scrolling. Typing the component name is slow.
3. When you want to put a component on a form you have decided before its origin. For example when you want to put a grid or a panel you already know if this must be a Delphi, or a DevExpress or a TMS etch.
4. Most of the times you want to select a set of controls: e.g.
a client dataset, a datasource, a dataset provider or
a textedit, a check box, a lookupcombobox etc. Therefore you cannot type all the time the component name.
5. The components must be categorized in a way that you can easily spot the group you want. Therefore if you have 100 row categories like in my case in order to find a specific category I must scroll each time 100 different tabs. Therefore if I want to put in a form for example a devexpress grid, a devexpress grid repository and a cxgridpopupmenu, some TMS contols, then some devexpress editors, then some data components then some remobjects components and then some reportbuilder components I must scroll this 100 row category list many times.
Now if you have some components categories (let say 6-10 at most) and some subcategories which contain all the relevant tabs inside things would be great.
From a ten items list select devexpress and devexpress subcategory and select the items you want. Shrink the toolbar items. Category TMS, subcategory TMS select some controls. Shrink. DevExpress , DevExpress editors choose controls and shink. Delphi, Datacontrols and choose some datacontrols and shrink. Remote Data, RemObjects choose and shrink. Final, Reports, Report Builder, choose and shrink.
All these without typing anything, and without having to scroll many unused row categories.
Best Regards,
November 29th, 2007 at 12:25 amManolis Perrakis
The very fact that after five years since D7 we are still here debating about the palette tells that something went wrong with the last one.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:24 amOverall, it’s not such an improvement. A lot depends on how people use it, how many components they install, how complex are their forms, and how they build them visually, how their IDE is organized, if they can remember each component name or are faster looking at icons, and so on. Some people find the new palette better, others don’t, and from their point of view probably both parties are right.
I have only to say that instead of a VS imitation, Borland/CodeGear could have retougth the palette in far better ways *for Delphi users*, not VS ones.
What really bothers me in the new IDE of Turbo C++ compared to C/C++ Builder 6 is the fact that the form-editor always display the form inside a white background window which in turn tires my eyes, I prefer the old-good Builder 6 approach were the Form lays as is on the screen!
Now, about the panel, these days I had to switch back to C/C++ Builder 6 and it’s old tool-bar, well it’s not that bad, but definitely lacks the new tool-bar features.. BUT..
On the other hand, the icon-setup of C/C++ Builder 6 tool-bar seems more intuitive than the icon-setup of the new tool-bar in the Turbo C++ Express edition (for example) so I really do not need these new search features when working with Builder 6 (and do not ask me why!).
Anyway, it’s a matter of taste
November 29th, 2007 at 2:02 amI do like the new palette over the old one mainly because the new one has filtering and all the tabs quickly visible in a menu. Yes, it takes more space but since I have a dual head VGA this isn’t a problem for me. Perhaps auto-hiding the palette mitigates this but I cannot say, I don’t have personal experience with this. (I have the OI in auto-hide mode and I’m satisfied, though). But the problems with the new palette are, imho:
1. QC #55403 - If you want to copy a component to the ‘Favorites’ category then you have to drag, draag, draaaaag, draaaaaaag… Perhaps an option in the right-click menu with ‘Copy/Move to… ‘ would be very nice.
2. QC #49791 - The most used component list (more details in the QC report)
4. QC #55404 - (a variant of the above) - The last used component list - as a menu perhaps
Just an aside, if you can *easily* (ie. design, coding, maintenance) provide _as_an_option_ the old style palette, then perhaps you should do it.
November 29th, 2007 at 2:09 amI deliberately have not watched the video (yet) because I wanted to see what all the problem is about. Having done that, all I can say is I’ve had to learn the pallette by trial and error. e.g. last week I was installing a component and after searching in the palette (and not finding it) I removed and re-installed a couple more times before I found the Hide/UnHide feature. I really like the the new pallette set up on dual monitors with a FULL editing screen on the left and OI,TP, Struc, and PM on the right monitor. I’ve saved off to a "Dual 1024 x 768 Screen" setting. When I need to also do work on the second monitor I switch D2007 back to "Default". Watching Marco’s demos had me wondering how on earth he got suuch a large font in the IDE. After a little searching in Tools | Editor Options | Display I changed my Font size to 13. I’m no longer straining to read the IDE. Which brings me back to one point that I would like to make …. The last bit of DECENT written documenation came out with D7. It took me a long time (Trying) to come to grips with this new help system, but I still want to rely on a BOOK, even if I have to BUY IT AT LULU !! How about it Nick ? In summary, I love D2007 and the new palette. Keep up the good work.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:32 amNick I love watching your little tutorials. Please bring them back. I learned so much watching that Tool Palette video. (and I’m really enjoying CodeRage II even though sessions start at 1.00 a.m. the next day downunder.
)
November 29th, 2007 at 3:45 amDavid Howes, I think you’re missing something indeed
The letters appear at the top of the tool palett (where it says ‘tool palette’).
November 29th, 2007 at 6:10 amI love the new tool palette, especially the filtering. My only quibble is that Filtering sometimes doesn’t kick in so instead of searching for the VCL I wind up renaming the control I was currently working with.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:22 amNick,
First - I completely agree that the new palette is more functional than the one I used in Delphi 7. Two suggestions for improving it further:
(1) Have the Favourites category managed dynamically. Itit keep the last 10 most used components sorted by most used to least used (the 10 should be configurable).
(2) The veritcal category label is good but for categories with many items it’s really no more visible than the horizontal form because it is rendered in the middle of the entire vertical range. I suggest that you repeat the title over and over vertically to completely fill the range.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:24 amI must confess I didn’t read ALL previous comments.
Still, here’s my personal view of it.
I like the new pallete, don’t LOVE it, just like it. Working on a laptop with a wide screen and 1680×1050 does help because I don’t feel that it wastes that much space as I can still easily fit in everything I need without feeling "cramped".
HOWEVER…
There’s one thing I don’t like (haven’t tested in SP3 as I just finished installing it), and that’s when the quick find option gets me typing in the property inspector instead of the proper place and I overwrite some property by accident. That’s a bug that was present as of at least SP1 and I haven’t tested on SP3 but is very annoying…
Otherwise, finding the right component is much easier/faster now, especially if you install a few component sets. You don’t NEED to know the name, but if you do, it’s very quick to put the compoenent in the form…
However, I can see that, in tighter screens, it can be a huge waste of space…
November 29th, 2007 at 9:23 amShort and sweet: space and relative intelligence. The new palette simply takes up too much space. It isn’t there when I want it to be and if I leave it undocked it takes up too much space (I’m one of those folks still living in a single monitor world because VMWare doesn’t support multi-monitor the way I want it to and because my employer is too cheap to give the developers (this is a software company no less) two monitors). I have one 17".
November 29th, 2007 at 11:01 amThe other is that the new palette tries to keep me from making mistakes by not allowing me to see things that won’t go on the currently focused page. As in if I’m on a unit page I can’t see ANYTHING component related! If I’m in the middle of a thought and want to check the help for a property usage, before I can get to it I have to go to a screen that allows that component and then select it…sucks, especially when I used to be able to select the component and punch F1! If there is a way that I can have all the components show all the time that would help. I don’t mind IDE’s that try to help but don’t try to make it "safe" for me - I can think on my own just fine thank you. And what’s this with trying to do a better Visual Studio than M$? DUMB IDEA - I LIKE the Delphi interface and here you’ve given me a bastardized version of VS with all of its worst characteristics. Floating design screens are MUCH better that that silly design palette for forms. Yecch! Yes, I realize that one can change back but the focus keeps changing unlike D7 - something you DIDN’T fix when you brought back the "old way".
Now, I’ll grant you - for component selection I am hooked on Ray’s Palette tool - it is very much faster for me to pick a category, select it, then select the component on the toolbar when it shows up.
If it’s in the cards, I would very much vote for a return of the old palette as an option. I would add Rays’ palette tool as a feature and I think you will have a good thing going. New palette for those that think that way, old palette for those of us that, after 10 years, have developed habits we don’t want to change. Like, God Help Me if you ever drop the "Classic" keyboard mapping - I’ve been using that since Turbo Pascal 3.02a way to long now to ever change (I am thankful for DPack’s Delphi mappings for VS - it’s the only way I can function in VS-land). I hear you when you speak of those that are resistant to change but the whole point of an IDE is to *assist* engineers in their work. Forcing new paradigms on experienced engineers does NOT promote productivity - it actually slows things down as we are required to change the habits and finger intelligence (my fingers know much more than I do about the IDE than I do, if I actually have to think about what I want to do I usually screw it up) that have taken decades to develop and hone to a fine art. It’s a standing given in software-land - incremental changes are best and I should like to see a few increments included in the next release (an SP would be better but…).
All this talk about the tool palette and "Favourites" made me realise that what I *really* wanted to do was drag (for example) a TButton on a form, change some properties, and then drag the ‘modified’ component back as a "favourite".
I was about to submit a QC request for this, when I discovered that you cal /already/ effectively do this - using "component templates". And, that it’s been around since D5. And it’s much more powerful than that. Whoops…
http://delphi.about.com/cs/howto/ht/htcomptempl.htm
November 29th, 2007 at 11:36 amLooking at the video I noticed that when typing in filtered mode the tool palette finds any component where the search string is at *any* position in the caption.
When typing e.h. ‘edit’ it finds TEdit, TDBEdit etc. Doing this in Turbo Delphi Pro it will just find TEdit. Is there a switch where I could force the palette in Turbo to search not only from the beginning of a component caption?
Michael
November 30th, 2007 at 12:52 amMichael Fritz, this is an improvement in Delphi 2007. Delphi 2006 and the turbo version only find items that match that search string right from the beginning.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:36 amHi Nick,
I think the issue here is not with the new palette and all its great new features, which by the way I really love. However, the issue is with the vertical layout of the new palette vs not even having the choice to use a horizontal style layout that we were happy with for several years. Horizontal layout of the palette is easier and faster for our eyes to scan through. It’s the natural reading flow sequence of our eyes so it comes easy. Giving us a choice to have the same horizontal layout at the top of our screen along with the toolbar, and all the new powerful features of the new vertical palette would have been perfect. A choice between a vertical or horizontal toolbar will make everybody happy. By the way, I think that GExperts component palette configuration options in Delphi 7 and earlier gave us the best most efficient and effective palette layouts. We can learn from them.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:26 amI can’t read all of the replies, there are too many. I’ve read a few and what I don’t get is why people keep proclaiming (and it’s not only on this topic) something like "I don’t understand why people keep complaining about…" Ok, you don’t understand: that’s a bad thing - you should understand. Like, it’s not a _virtue_ not to understand something you know.
Another thing that bugs me is the properties in the Object inspector, they’re ten times worse than the D7 format. Just so hard to find anything. And I’m never going to find things by starting to type their name - I’m not going back to text based work. Like somebody said above, I don’t know the flippin’ name, duh!
Keep things solid and in one place. Ok, I take the point that the old toolbar did reduce subject to context, but it’s just so hard to find anything in the new one: there’s so much stuff, unwanted stuff, and it’s always in the way.
While I’m having a moan. The Project Manage: same problem. I always have to keep collapsing the view of projects in my project group before I can find the one I’m working on. I wish it would remember the way it was when I left it. It takes me about ten keystrokes or more and miles of mouse movement (battling all the while with the popping in and out of the whole thing from the side) to get it the way I want it before I can do anything.
I just want everything exactly the way I put it, and for it to stay that way.
Don’t start me on the help.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:34 amFred Weller: Left click, choose properties. Put a checkmark on ‘Allways Show Designer Items’ and all the components will stay in the palette as long as a project is loaded.
I cant see how I should be able to select something with the mouse faster than I type. Maby I just suck at ‘point and click’…
But again - you can make the new palette tool look very much like the old one. You can make it buttons only and horizontal. And you can use your mouse to choose category like you choosed tabs, and you can choose component with the mouse like you did before. The typing-filtering-thing is an option.
-Vegar
November 30th, 2007 at 11:58 amI have been using component filtering since delphi4 via a plugin so the disappeared palette is really not shocking news (in fact i have it always invisible and only turned it on to explore new added omponents). You only get lost in the pallette if you install jedi and some other components-packs.
The new one in 2007 is ok, i do like the reordering and the favorites, i have used the 2007 palette for a week (before i bounced on large file problems and went back to delphi7 + Lazarus) and it was not a big change except for the shortcut! If you have many components its just easier and faster navigation & creation, they should have done this 5 years ago
-Marius
December 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 am+1 for new palette and IDE.
But if somebody really need old style palette - try The TwoDesk Mini Palette.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:31 amThanks for those tips, Vegar. It’s true that the new tool palette can be made like the old one. The only thing I can’t do now is get it into as small a space. I’ve put it across the bottom of the screen for now.
All that’s preventing it from being the same size as the old one now is two rows of more or less blank space at the top, one for the caption and one for two or three buttons (filter on/off etc.)
It seems easier to arrange this way. I’ve just moved the things I need to the front of the list and got things more or less the way I like them.
It does take up too much space this way, though, so I’m going to put it back to the new way. Let’s see…Hmm, now that is much nicer. Now that I’ve got my things organised, and selected "Always show designer items" I think I’m happy now.
Now for Project Manager (no Properties menu) and Object Inspector. Heh.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:01 am"Now, I get that for some reason some of you still like the old one, but frankly, I think it is because you are either completely resistant to change
or because you don’t know the features and advantages of the new tool palette."
Gee, I’m so glad you’re willing to talk down to me. Makes me feel like a valued customer.
I can’t stand the new tool palette. I’m much slower with it, I could create a new form with many controls very rapidly in D7 and it simply takes me longer now. Don’t tell me about keyboard this or that, when I’m doing form design my hand is on the mouse and if it has to leave it slows me down. And the amount of screen space it takes up is terrible. Auto-hide is not a good option, that is a very inconvenient solution to the problem.
Its a moot point though. Our entire development team has retired Delphi and moved to Visual Studio. Its sad, I’m no longer as productive as I once was and now I have to deal with MS junk. But, on the bright side, I don’t have to fight IT departments about why we are using Borland products when Microsoft is the company standard. If I have to adjust to a new IDE and way of doing things, I might as well just move to Visual Studio. Its less hassle for me and it provides more employment opportunities. It seems many developers feel the same way.
I’m afraid Borland / CodeGear seems destined to follow in the footsteps of Novell.
A very sad former Delphi developer.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm