Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #52
18 Jan
- The Skype Team needs a Delphi developer. I think I’ve mentioned once or twice that the Windows Skype client is developed with Delphi.
- One of the unsung heroes of the Delphi community is Zarko Gajic, the guy who runs the http://delphi.about.com website. He has an RSS feed that, if you aren’t already subscribed, you should be. Every day it contains a link to an excellent technical topic about Delphi. Anyhoo — Zarko is running a fun programming contest, "Creating Fancy Applications", so you should give it a shot.
- I may have mentioned this before, but I absolutely love Firefox’s way of doing search. You hit CTRL-F and you get that little bar at the bottom and it automatically does incremental search. I love that. And I realize how much I love it when I hit CTRL-F in other tools (one of which shall remain nameless….) and I get a dialog box that pops up. I usually feel a little twinge. And no one can doubt my sincerity on this point: I thought there probably would be something about this in QualityCentral, and indeed there was, entered by none other than yours truly.
My favorite development tool has a similar feature when you want to do a quick search. Just press Ctrl+E and start typing for an Incremental Search. It is great that you have a choice between CTRL+E and CTRL+F with the full search dialog and all the extra functionality it provides.
Although I will admit Firefox has trained me well and I often times press CTRL+F by default.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:54 pmAlso, Castalia replaces the CTRL+F dialog with functionality similar to your description.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pmJust a quick reminder, all comments in QualityCentral are right aligned in MSIE. This bug was reported at 2003…
January 18th, 2008 at 6:54 pmUh, you can override most of the IDE shortcuts with your own expert. (it should only take you an hour or four to get it working…)
That said, I hate that "solution". I have been BEGGING for a decent keybinding/macro system in the IDE for years now. It isn’t a new idea, you find in in products like Visual Studio, and even Apple OsX.
I figure any time you find a feature that MS and Apple can agree is worth implmenting, you’ve probably stumbled onto something useful.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:15 pmThere is even a tool (add-on) for Internet Explorer which does the same (IEPro). Looks like the joined wisdom is voting for dialogless Ctrl-F
January 19th, 2008 at 3:53 amI like the way CTRL+F how it works in FF, CTRL + E in Delphi looks similar, but I miss the highlighting feature in FF with CTRL + F
January 19th, 2008 at 5:46 amC Johnson:
January 19th, 2008 at 10:18 amDo you have a QC number. I’d vote for that.
Also ‘/’ will do de same as Ctrl-F. But if CodeGear was just a little more focused on Linux you should already know that. Sorry…
It’s in Linux since VI.
January 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am@Nick: as others and even a comment on the QC report you linked noted, CTRL-E is close enough!
@C Johnson: have you tried GExperts? Among many (and I mean MANY!) useful additions, you get to remap all IDE Menu shortcuts (or add some for those without a keyboard accelerator); unfortunately, you don’t have a way to remap the edit key-bindings but you do have a lot of extras to make it worth it.
But, I agree that a "custom keyboard" is LONG overdue! Maybe (surely!) there’s some QC report on it but I’m too lazy with QC to bother with it, until someone comes out and lets us know that they have only a few hundred open reports left and need more!
January 20th, 2008 at 2:46 pmIf even the Delphi Product Manager can’t have his new features implemented in less than two years…
January 21st, 2008 at 5:34 amSince you mention Firefox way of doing it; Have you ever tried Opera? A simple dot enables incremental search of full text, and a comma searches only inside links. Instead of a complete toolbar, you only get a small ‘hint’-window that will disappear after some time.
I guess a dot would be a bad choice for a short-cut, but I really prefer the hint-window over a toolbar. Maybe the next firefox will also get a transparent non-focused window for search, now that they are going to be ‘humanized’ ?
-Vegar
January 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pmZarko’s stuff is good but too verbose for reading online. I sometimes wonder where finds the time!
He might consider taking all his work and publish a book for novice to intermediate programmers.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:18 amNick, thanks for the exposure!
p.s.
Zarko lives in several dimensions at once - this is where he finds the time to continue working on delphi.about.com.
Like Skeeve and the gang in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Fine_Myth
January 24th, 2008 at 3:47 amBruce -> I believe someone else does, but I can’t remember the #.
Fernando -> GExperts only addresses the main menu, and none of the other editor keybindings. Also, I have recently removed GExperts on the recommendation that it mixes poorly with DelphiSpeedUp, and just as reported to me, the Delphi IDE doesn’t crash anywhere near as frequently with GExperts gone. If I ever figure out why, I’ll report it to Andreas. (but since I only really used GExperts for a few editor features that I have since rebuilt for myself, I doubt I ever will)
February 8th, 2008 at 4:02 am