RAD Studio 2010 — IDE Features: "Old School" Tool Palette
06 Aug
Okay, I’m a big fan of the new tool palette – and I’ve said so pretty often. I find the new one very, very powerful and very, very easy to use, and I find it somewhat mysterious that some folks don’t prefer it. But many of you have disagreed, so now, back by popular demand, is the “old school” tool palette.
It appears optionally as just another toolbar you can right-click and select. It even does filtering like the new toolbar. And if it looks familiar, it is: Andreas (doh! Fixed!, sorry Andreas!) Hausladen pretty much wrote the whole thing. Thanks, Andreas.
One of the first things I learned the hard way writing commercial applications was that NEVER EVER remove any functionality bc you think nobody uses it or it could be done better another way. Users will always complain so always give option to keep the old one.
Another big change in Delphi that should have been optional is order of new events. I never have my events in alphabetical order ( whats the point of having them in alphabetical order ?? ). Old way that inserted them at end of file was much faster, I know where I find them and no need to hunt them.
So pls lets have option to turn old way back.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:04 amWho is Anders Hausladen?
August 6th, 2009 at 9:14 am@David,
http://andy.jgknet.de/blog/
August 6th, 2009 at 9:24 amAnd now I have to take the blame for every bug in the Component Toolbar. Thanks, Nick
August 6th, 2009 at 9:29 amAndreas, please post your home phone number in case I have problems with the Component Toolbar. Just kidding, your office number will be fine.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:04 am@Bruce,
No, that’s Andreas Hausladen. Perhaps Anders is his Swedish cousin……
August 6th, 2009 at 10:39 amThanks!
August 6th, 2009 at 10:55 amI hope I can disable the new one completly.
I also hope that the new IDE can be configured so it works similarly to the Delphi 7 one, i.e. with all windows undocked.
I’m glad to see the component bar back. With the search/Filter feature, it is just as powerful as the "new toolbar" with out wasting huge swaths of screen space.
I see in your screen shot that you have it tucked exactly where I would -> In the wasted blank space in the top right of the toolbars area. Which means you don’t give up anything in screen space to host it - unlike the new version which requires a big chunk of the main editing area.
Let’s be honest Nick. The power of the "new style" is more about the filtering than the visual presentation. When you bring the filtering back to the old style toolbar, you have the best of both worlds! Heck, with the right click menu to quickly select a section, it is even easier to browse to a particular tab (the way the new style does it is horrible to navigate once you get in a serious pile of components unless you filter, which can be a pain if you want to work with a group of components instead of filtering - which is nice, but cumbersome if you already have your components grouped well)
August 6th, 2009 at 11:37 amOh, a follow up question about how this tool palette was written.
Was Andreas about to write it as a native part of the IDE, or is it still hacked in the hard way? I ask, because previous attempts at the tool palette were good, but not quite 100% (drag and drop not working for example - understandable given the limitations).
Since this is clearly superious to the version in DDevExtensions, is there any chance the new tool palette can be back-ported to 2007 for those of us who need it for non-unicode friendly code still well within its life time? (this might also fix the bug that shows up when you use the new toolpalette search for components that are visual when you have a datamodule displayed in the current DDevExtensions build for D2007)
August 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pmSweet. I can tell you why some people like the old tool bar. I’ve noticed that many people read from left to right. Why I do myself as a matter of fact. It’s just what I’m used to.
I guess other people read down but to me it’s just not as fast, or as easy.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pmXepol, I understand that you like the old one better, but why do you think you need to convince those of us who’ve used both versions over the years, and prefer the new one, that the old one is better? The old one is better for you, the new one is better for me (docked on the right on my widescreen monitor, no problems with screen real estate…) Now in D2010 you get to choose either one and we don’t have to bother arguing about it! Nice!
August 6th, 2009 at 4:16 pmFrom what I have seen so far, it seems IDE Insight > New Palette > Old Palette. I will have to use 2010 to see if the equation is right.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:22 pmI don’t care about the historical component palette, I like the new one much much better. But what I care about is that Embarcadero care about the wishes of their customers. Lateley I can see an increased effort to listen to what customers want and to make their wishes come true. I like it that way, go ahead Embarcadero!
August 6th, 2009 at 6:51 pmDid anyone notice that the "old" palette has a ribbon-like interface (although much more limited given its scope) while the "new" palette has the "outlook bar"-like interface? If someone there didn’t spend his time to go after VS, he could have "discovered" ribbons before MS did.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:09 pm@Pratt
I agree with you on the alphabetical order of methods.
Please vote for http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=53480 so our opinions are known at CodeGear.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:22 pm@ Jeroen
I have voted for it long time ago giving it my 10 votes.
Alphabetical ordering slowed me down so much that I decided to stay on D7 and will stay as long as I don’t get option to turn off alphabetical ordering.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:55 pm@Joe
I’d like it even better if they’d listen to those of us that would prefer not to have to switch to VS just to produce 64 bit apps for the x64 OS that MS released four years ago.
Perhaps it’s just me that wants to target x64…..
August 7th, 2009 at 1:07 amHi All,
As some of you may know, I joined Embarcadero in Feb, running R&D after having spent a lot of years at Borland. I have to say that I’m extremely excited and very proud of the new 2010 release. The team (including the beta testers) have done a great job and the intensity these last couple of months where I sit in Scotts Valley has been tremendous. While I liked the new palette style, I also liked the simplicity and quiet elegance of the old one. In fact, one of my first requests to the team was to bring it back. It’s gratifying to see positive comments.
As far as Pratt’s comments on alph-ordering of events, I agree with him. I think I’ll vote for that one as well.
Regards,
August 7th, 2009 at 5:50 amTony
I hope the old school bar can be disabled. I never liked it and having installed additional components resulted in an awful usabilty. I do not care of screen estate the time of 1024 x 768 are (luckily) gone.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:35 amDirk –
Yes, it most definitely can be disabled. In fact, it is off by default.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:36 am@MarkF -> it is less about convincing and more about educating. Nick said he did not understand why people prefered it, I explained why I prefered the old tool palette.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me a single redeeming factor about the appearance of the new tool palette (I get that filtering is nice functionality, but it isn’t linked to appearance since it can clearly work in the old style just as well - but in my mind that was all the new tool palette had going for it.).
I also have a widescreen display, and frankly I prefer having the extra width for form designing.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:05 amHere’s the part I don’t understand: If you want more width, unpin the Tool Palette and let it slide away to the side. Then it takes up almost /no/ screen real estate. You can do that with the old one. It’s there all the time.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am@Nick
Yes, I agree if you unpin the Visual Studio style Tool Palette it is taking no screen real estate but the side effect is that it is also not visible
On the other hand Delphi classic Tool palette occupies space which is unused and is simply wasted anyway.
Now something I don’t understand. Assuming both Palettes are functionally equivalent what is an advantage of not using the classic Delphi one?
August 7th, 2009 at 2:45 pm@Nick -> I end up double clicking the tab to get full screen when I need the extra space right now. I never unpin anything, because I find it very annoying to have to have to try to trick the windows to popup and stay popped up when I need them (yes, I could repin it for a few minutes but then I have to unpin it later again). Undocking can also be annoying - I always end up having to play window hockey to get the palette out of my way - it will pretty much ALWAYS be on top of something.
No matter what you do, unless you totally hide the new tool palette, it is always in the way somehow. This is perhaps what annoys me the most. It even consumes screen space when I am in the editor and trust me, I find that VERY annoying - which is why I double click the tab to get full screen. Of course, then I have to double click to get the tool palette back for the designer.
I am basically always having to use the scrollbars, or click things just to get my work done with busy forms (and sadly, many of the forms I have to work with are very busy at least at design time)
I found I did not have that problem with the way that the D7 IDE behaved. Not only did the old tool palette sit nicely tucked out of the way, using window space that otherwise does not get used but the current 2007 and 2009 IDEs attempts to imitate undocked mode still fall short.
If there was a way to faithfully reproduce the D7 undocked mode instead of only mostly, I suspect many D7 hold outs would jump at all the new IDE productitive features and new language features. (this said, I have learned to live with the tabbed form designer but I still find I wish I could see 2 forms on the screen at the same time at times - for copy and paste and design consitency purposes as 2 examples)
Still, bringing back choice with the old style tool palette is a great step forward and will definitely encourage some people to finally move forward.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:52 pmDoes the IDE still require .NET framework?
August 7th, 2009 at 7:17 pm@Tony
You are my hero and favorite Embarcadero employee !
August 7th, 2009 at 9:05 pmSo how do you get windows onto different screens easily in the new style IDE (by new style I mean the VS-a-like one as opposed to D6/7 which we can call old style, say).
In the old style versions you can have a form design desktop that puts the Object Inspector and Object Tree View on a different screen from the form that you are designing. This is essential for any "large" forms that you are designing.
Now, I guess the answer is that you use undocked windows. Presumably the Desktops feature of D6/7 is still available in the new style IDE? In which case you can set up different desktops for different tasks: e.g. a code desktop which emphasises the editor window, a debug desktop that adds in breakpoints, watches, local variables windows etc., a form design window that brings up object inspector, object tree view and places them undocked on a separate screen.
If you can do all this then it doesn’t seem to me that the new style IDE results in any loss of capability and so I don’t understand why everyone is whining so.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:50 pmI’ll grant that the non-embeded designer in 2009 does appear to be handy. I just checked it. I have it, but I do not work on it because I have not yet had the time to chase down the implications of the unwisely implemented unicode string changes yet. Hoping to get that done in time for D2010 - yes Nick, many of us are still pretty miffed at the lame excuses about how a string type compiler switch is just too hard when it already exists since D2 for shortstrings….)
THat said, it is now even more useful now that we don’t have to waste screen space on the new style tool palette.
Why are people so upset about it? Because many of us found it to be a bad design change that caused us problems and if we chose to upgrade, we were stuck with it. At the time of the change, Delphi was still in the hands of Borland who basically forced it down our throats and then abused us when we complained that they had broken something that had worked perfectly fine before. So ya, some people are still a bit #$*&ed about it. It was a change for change sake - as proven here, the additional functionality could have been fitted into the older style tool palette.
Thankfully, we now have that most wonderful of things - CHOICE. Providing we also make the choice to bring our projects to a sudden halt while we test for unicode related upgrade issues in ever dark corner. For some who write the equivalent of BioLife, this is easy. For those of us who are saddled with longer life code, this can be a serious hurdle to jump, so the annoyance sticks.
Which is part of why I was wondering if this tool could at least be back ported to D2007. It might not sell copies of 2010 just yet, but it might at least move a few more units for D2007 if registered users know they can get it and I am betting that since the dev team has it done already, it should not be a difficult task to back port to D2007 (a recompile in D2007 I am speculating, maybe a bit of tweaking for internals upgrades, but hopefully not many)
August 7th, 2009 at 10:17 pmNice! I will adopt D2010.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:23 am.Net is a Deal Breaker –
Yes, the IDE needs the .Net framework.
Nick
August 8th, 2009 at 7:10 amCouple of questions about the "legacy" tool palette.
1) When you filter, can you see components on multiple tabs at the same time, or do you need to click on each tab?
2) Is there any way to show the component names without hovering over each one and waiting for the popup hint?
August 8th, 2009 at 9:21 amForgot one.
3) Can it be made muti-line, or does it run off the right side of the page when there are too many tabs?
August 8th, 2009 at 9:23 amBruce –
1) You have to go to the individual tabs
August 8th, 2009 at 9:36 am2) No, sorry — same as the D7 and earlier one.
3) Not that I know of.
4) Can it be turned off?
August 8th, 2009 at 9:51 amBruce –
4) Yes. You actually have to turn it on, as it is off by default.
August 8th, 2009 at 9:51 am5) Whew!
August 8th, 2009 at 10:59 amBut I will say that it will appear of you go into undocked mode.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:16 amI’ll bet the GExperts-guys will give Andreas’ work an extra layer of Polish and implement multiline - just like the goooood ol’ Delphi 7 (with GExperts). That version has proven itself very hard to beat. They did a lot of things right back then. It compiles fast (last one together with Anders before he turned to the Dark side?), help is intuitive, informative and contains a lot of good examples. The IDE, old-fashion as it may look, works. Forthermore, many of the new components that are added thereafter, are working poorly and shouldn’t have been there
August 9th, 2009 at 9:07 pmThe biggest drawback of the "VS-imitation" IDE is it wasn’t designed taking into account multi-monitor capabilities. It is essentially a way to cram everything into a single monitor. With VS2010, MS is beginning to acknowledge VS should become multi-monitor friendly.
August 9th, 2009 at 10:20 pmNot only the palette took a design that works in VS because the average VB/C# programmer usually has much less components on her palette, but moreover it has no "memory": switch from form to code, then to from and it will be reset - and I wonder someone can like this behaviour. Filtering is nice, but it requires a lot of mouse-keyboard-mouse switches - being form design usually a mouse intensive task. Or someone out there has three hands, or the first, mouse-centric ribbon-like palette works far better.
Another silly design is the structure pane: again it will switch depending on focus. But when I work on my two monitors system, often I have the form being designed on one monitor, and the code editor on the other. I wish I could have the form components trees beside the form to easy navigate it, and the code tree beside the code editor to navigate the code. Actually, that is no longer possible because the IDE was designed with an EEPC in mind and not a multi monitor, high resolution display. First I have to focus the form, then, if some bug don’t hinder switching as it does in 2007, I can select the component I need.
People there should start to think indipendently too. Forget VS. Forget .NET. Interview *your* users. Deliver what they need.
Who needs multi-line tabs on the old tool palette with the right click menu? Same basic effect, saves screen space.
Nick -> Any thought on if the team is willing to consider the old tool palette for D2007 users? (without commiting to deliverying anything)
August 10th, 2009 at 7:04 amThe return to the old component palette is a step in the right direction but it doesn’t go far enough. I also want to hide the search box on the palette and change the IDE’s swish new graphics. It looks way too modern now IMO. Also, there should be options to disable generics, record methods, for in, and other language enhancements because that $h1t just scares me. And can there be an install option that names everything "Borland" Delphi. I don’t want to get all flustered trying to find the application shortcut under my Start Menu. And do you think we can pressure NBC into getting the Friends cast back together?
August 11th, 2009 at 2:48 pmnaf –
LOL — You may just be the winner of the "Greatest Comment in the History of this Blog".
August 12th, 2009 at 5:10 pmHeh heh, couldn’t resist a dig at those developers still clinging to their outmoded features (and their flares and platform shoes too, no doubt ;-).
D2010 looks like a great upgrade (old component palette aside).
August 12th, 2009 at 7:37 pm@Nick
Can you explain why site is so often down ? Does give very bad impression about Embarcadero.
@naf
Whats your problem with old component palette ? You dont need to use it if you dont want to.
What I have seen so far about new things in D2010, return of old component palette is ONLY reason the make me consider upgrading from D7.
August 13th, 2009 at 4:26 amAny commnets on nVidia CUDA???
August 13th, 2009 at 6:33 am@nick @naf
Disappointed you should find ridicule, even abuse, of your intelligent developer customers worthy of "Greatest Comment".
August 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am(They chose Delphi, so they’re not stupid)
@naf
I agree, bringing back the classic component palette by Embarcadero is as good idea as bringing back electric car by GM
The rest of your post is not worth commenting…
August 13th, 2009 at 9:56 am@IainMc, Pratt, et al.
My comments were only intended as tongue-in-cheek and I’m certainly not implying that there is any link between intelligence and inexplicable fondness for old-school features.
My point is simply that a lot of developers seem to cling to features like the undocked IDE, old component palette, etc, because they are reluctant to change, not because the old way is any more productive.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:51 pmHas the UIStateForm focus bug in the VCL been fixed, too?
August 13th, 2009 at 3:15 pm[...] Nick Hodges » Blog Archive » RAD Studio 2010 — IDE Features: "Old … [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 3:53 pm@naf
New D200x IDE totally killed productivity, not just new component palette. Slow, unstable, bad help, alphabetical ordering of new events, problems with F11/F12 and the list goes on.
D200x isnt RAD it’s very SAD.
Old component palette is first right step towards good usable IDE. IDE is a tool and every developer should be able to use it how he/she wants. Why should developers need to change the way they work ??
August 13th, 2009 at 11:37 pm@Pratt
Completely agree with you on the point of D200x Help. It is bordering on unusable.
Completely disagree with you with respect to general productivity. I use D2007, previously D2006, having after a long period of procrastination jumped from D5 (with CodeRush). D2007 is at least as stable as D5 and the speed difference is inconsequential. However certain features make the D2007 IDE significantly more productive.
Off the top of my head:
- Sync Editing
- Rename refactoring
- Find Unit refactor
- Component filtering
And that is not even considering some of the fantastic language enhancements (e.g. Record Methods) and component enhancements (e.g. AlignWithMargins).
For every one of your pet peeves I bet there are half a dozen enhancements that more than outweigh them.
When I have to go back to D5 to check out something I feel I have one arm tied behind my back.
August 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pm@naf
I don’t use D2007 so I haven’t used Sync Editing but I googled it. To me it looks just another way of search and replace.
Creating forms with hundreds of labels, fields and other components is real PITA with D200x bc it takes so much more time than in D7.
I don’t need unicode and I already have ribbon controls from 3rd party so there is nothing useful in D200x that outweighs lost productivity ( IDE, Help ).
August 17th, 2009 at 12:38 am[...] IDE Features: “Old School” Tool Palette [...]
August 17th, 2009 at 11:55 am[...] Новая старая панель компонентов. Да, теперь сама среда поддерживает возможность расположить компоненты в Delphi7-style виде. Читаем обзор функции на Wings of Wind, а также у Andreano Lanusse и
August 25th, 2009 at 1:33 pmTo the new tool palette ,
is just something for let it closed cause it takes
too much space making to mush polution at screen .
That one is nice better and simple .
Maybe when with milions of useful standard components
the other will made some sense of use .
So then when better pratical component creation available,
September 8th, 2009 at 9:48 amit will be raised fot to supply demmand .
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