This Bugzilla instance is a read-only archive of historic NetBeans bug reports. To report a bug in NetBeans please follow the project's instructions for reporting issues.
This is a serious cry for help or even criticism. I have been very happy with NetBeans until I downloaded my first build with the new GUI changes. The COMBINATION of some of these changes plus a few bugs plus the fact that I work exclusively in full-screen SDI mode render the current build almost unworkable for me. 1) All icons are the same. How am I supposed to switch between windows in SDI mode ??? The fact that there is already a closed issue #39460 and a changed specification http://ui.netbeans.org/nonav/docs/ui/ws/ws_spec.html#4.8 doesn't help me. This is a very unfortunate situation. It is nonsense. NetBeans SDI mode is being killed by this. 2) Workspaces can't be configured. Where are the workspaces tabs that used to be under the main toolbar? I always lose the explorer window when I run or debug an application. I searched the help system that still refers to the tabs. Is there a way to switch them on? How to configure work spaces? 3) Workspaces are not required in full screen SDI mode. There is no screen real estate to manage. Please refer to issue #21542. However, if the problems that are listed above did not exist then I could work as usual - even with workspaces that don't help me - without any problems.
I'll try to comment: 1) Icons are only half of the information about window. When doing alt+tab, you can watch title bar text. I just tried and it looks OK to me. I agree that with icons it would be even better, but that's principial problem to us - there is no need for icons in Compact window mode, so we would have to keep extra set of icons just for separated mode and we wanted to avoid it. I don't believe that you can't switch because of icons - titles work OK for me. Another thing - did you try to switch using shortcuts that are mentioned in main menu? Ctrl+2, Ctrl+0, Ctrl+3 etc? It works lovely here to me. 2) Workspaces are dead and burried. We believe there is no need for them. Unfortunately I don't undertand your problem - how can you loose explorer? What? 3) Issue 21542 is obsolete I think and should be closed. We have no workspaces now. Don't get me wrong, I feel your pain and I'm trying to help you, but it's hard, no window system on the earth suits everybody. And believe me, old winsys was very hard to maintain etc., we had to do soem simplifications. Please explain your problems exactly so that we can move forward - why you can't switch when there's titles shown and you can use shortcuts? How are you loosing explorer, is it closed automatically or what? I'm sorry I have to close as invalid, and please don't abuse priority - P1 is data loss or frozen, unusable system.
Thanks David for your help. I will definitely move forward and change my ways to work with the system. From that perspective, the use of shortcuts to access windows seems an efficient alternative to window icons. Thanks for telling me that workspaces are gone. That will make it easier for me to deal with the issue of the disappearing explorer window, e.g. how to write a testcase. I would like to illustrate why icons are still critical for separated (SDI) mode. SDI mode with all full screen windows is very powerful because it completely eliminates the need to arrange windows on the screen. Therefore there is never a need to have a larger monitor. For some beginners or casual users SDI would be ideal because it is much easier to concentrate on a given task. However, beginners don't usually master the use of control keys. For some reason I did not master them, either. In that case, reading the descriptions on identical icons on the task bar/window list to find a window is wrong, almost ridiculous, given the fact that it is possible to have separate icons for each window. In comparison, other applications such as Netscape DO have separate icons, e.g. for the browser, the mail client, the download manager and even for the JavaScript console. I can confidently say that separate icons for different types of windows within an application are an established industry standard today. The user intuitively expects these icons. They are already beside the menu entries. One could argue to remove them from the menu entries as well. Given the fact that the NetBeans team makes extraordinary efforts to streamline the GUI also to make the NetBeans IDE more competetive, it appears to be an unfortunate choice to abandon the different icons. IMHO the extra expense of separate icons is worth the improvement of basic usefulness of the SDI mode. In other words it is a bad loss not to have them. The fact that the lack of icons is already entrenched in a NetBeans specification should not in any way affect a re-evaluation of the decision that has been made. The specification is wrong. It is in conflict with existing industry standards.
Thanks ... verified
I am re-opening this. I have created multiple issues and found some rasied by others. The reason why I think that SDI mode does not work well at all is that a number of things, most of them worked in an older release, are now broken in 3.6 RC2: issue 39751: Compiler window does not get focus issue 39997: Editor window does not get focus on debugger breakpoints in GUI applications issue 41681: Editor loses top position on [Alt+G] issue 41258: Project tab doesn't receive focus after switch to it I am switching to the old release after I re-tested all the bugs. I feel that there hasn't been any improvement at all since I raised this issue.
just you know, I'm using SDI and can't live without it. I'd like to vote for this issue.
I've entered issue #41935 for un/docking window's feature.
re-evaluate please ...
this is an issue about different frames having different icons. How come it became an umbrella issue for all SDI relaed problems?
I reviewed issue history and it seems that reporter (bht) made this issue to be umbrella, which don't reflect reality IMO. Several bugs mentioned as dependent were already fixed, others will be looked at as time and resources permits. I believe we don't need any special umbrella issue for SDI problems. I changed summary of this issue to be only about icons and I'm closing it as invalid, because as specified earlier above, our UI spec http://ui.netbeans.org/docs/ui/ws/ws_spec.html says all icons should be the same and I personally agree with its reasoning. If you (reporter) still believe icons should be different, please talk to jrojcek@netbeans.org and try to convince him to modify the spec. Thanks.
closed
This issue had *3 votes* before move to platform component