- Cleaner UI. We removed a lot of wasted space which makes the IDE a lot more crisp, IMO. Granted, every time we saved some space, it was only a few pixels here and there. But, if I recall correctly, we ended up saving something like 150 pixels width-wise and about 50 height-wise. That's a fair chunk of savings!
- More configurability. You can drag re-order tabs, or even drag them off into their own window. This is super helpful since it allows me to configure the IDE for the way I work. Some of the new configurability is not stuff I would use (such as floating properties palette or non-tabbed editing), but it was highly requested and so I suspect a lot of people will be pleased with it. I can see it being really great for people with multiple monitors (using the KVM pretty much precludes me from that sort of setup).
- MenuItem icons and non-printable keyboard shortcuts are a great addition. I've been pushing for them since I started at the company, and I'm glad the feature is finally here. As you can see, we're making heavy use of this new feature as well (the Linux IDE uses menu icons, and all IDEs use the non-printables). Another good case of eating our own dogfood.
- Listboxes which automatically hide their scrollbars! This UI mistake drove me nuts, and I'm so glad to see there's now a way to get the proper behavior.
- And of course, there are a lot of little new things which are easy to miss. SpecialFolder.CurrentWorkingDirectory, the new Window Editor Behavior dialog, better navigation within the IDE for overloaded methods, better Go To functionality in the code and window editors, etc
So what are your favorite things?
I just like to put rb5.5.5 and 2006r3 on two seperate monitors and it is really, night and day, you guys deserve a huge round of applause for all the work you put into this.
Bravo.
I think the whole controllability of the r3 IDE is incredible.
As a matter of interest, was there a technical reason to make the floating properties a preference, rather than let them tear-off like a tab?
Or was it just that the properties palette was tackled first?
My favorites are the Reorderable Tabs and the Windows Printer SetupString bug fix. I'm also using ContainerControls more and so I really appreciate the bug fixes there too.
Joe Huber
@Steve -- The UI is entirely different for properly doing the properties window, so we went for the low-hanging fruit first and made it a preference.
@Joe -- That's another good point, there were a bunch of bug fixes that make a lot of things more stable.
I haven't had a lot of nitty gritty time with the new IDE yet. I'll really have to check out the menu item icons; they sound spiffy. My favorite fix is the encrypted items. :D
Hi Joe,
dont get too exited as the setupstring still crashes with thermal printers. Looks like we will still have to wait a little while longer for WIN32.
Printer : Zebra Zpl-2844 , the worlds standard warehouse printer.
Dim PageSetup ,ps as PrinterSetup
PageSetup=New PrinterSetup
If PageSetup.PageSetupDialog Then ' select thermal printer
ps=new PrinterSetup
ps.SetupString=PageSetup.SetupString
If ps.PageSetupDialog Then
hopefully someone will find this one day as I have cracked it.
the printersetup string must be 6555 characters long, if yours is not then add a string filled with chr(0). This took me 3 years to work this out so you can imagine I am a happy boy today.
part of my decode code.
dim ps as PrinterSetup
dim i,i1,p as integer
dim s,s1,t as string
ps=new PrinterSetup
for i= 1 to 6555
t=t+chr(0)
next
i1=len(sall)
for i=1 to i1 step 2
s1=mid(sall,i,2)
p=cdbl("&h"+s1)
s=s+ChrB(p)
next
s=s+left(t, 6555-lenb(s) )
ps.SetupString=s
return ps
also dont encodebase64 your string to save in preferences make your own as I have done above, Encode does not chr(128)-> so this causes problems as well.
encode
dim i ,i1,p as integer
dim s,sall as string
i1=lenb(ps.SetupString)
for i=1 to i1
p=AscB(midb(ps.SetupString,i,1))
s="0"+hex(p)
s=right(s,2)
sall=sall+s
next
return sall
Sorry Aaron for being so totally off topic but as I have been searching and I found the obsure reference above maybe somone else will.