Andrew Stopford's Weblog

Hi Andrew,

Interesting idea, I agree with you that having many files open in Visual Studio can be quit a pain, when I get lost I go to the file/tab with the most interest and click "close all but this" and start from there again. And just regularly closing all is also a practise I thought myself ;)

I really like not to have tabs, but I would also really dislike to have to use the mouse to navigate to much. So I would like to suggest adding automatic short cuts to the items with a number to indicate which file to open, these numbers would be the order of the bread crumbs. And it should be a different short cut for the tag cloud, and there the short cut should not change depending on the popularity of the file. And of course keep the Ctrl + Tab functionality working.

I only wonder how you would solve the bread crumb issue when going back and forward between files file1 > file2 > file3 > file2 > file3 I still want to see file1 but not the different jumps between file2 and file3.

The tag cloud should not be in time open, it should be smarter and use time active in the file, so scrolling of mousing or what every, because if it is just time open then when a college asks a question it might impact the tag cloud wrongly.

Hehe this became a long reply, which indicates the frustration I have with the current solution ;)

-Mark

One issue I see with a cloud based on how long you're in a file is that being in a file (presumably, the file open and the foremost window) is not always a good indication of significance of use.

However, a cloud of filenames based on how many times a file was OPENED and/or SAVED, perhaps as a "commonly used files" interface, is a great idea.

"The longer you stay in the file the bigger its presence in the cloud, the less time the smaller (until it vanishes from the cloud)."

This is a good example of what I don't like about the way MS designs a lot of their software: The software thinks it knows what I want or tries to guess. Every time you do this, you lose predictability and introduce user frustration.

I don't like, for example, how VS thinks it can figure out what CSS files I will use at runtime. If it could figure out 100% then I would not have a problem with it, but since it can't, I would much rather it let me tell it what those files to consider.

There are many more examples, however, the rule of thumb should be this: If it can't do a perfect job at guessing / helping / anticipating the user's intention it should not do it at all. Just my opinion, of course.

I hope the next editor's border won't be round like that and the text won't be that blurry... There's also a lot of wasted space around there. It's probably just a proof of concept, but just making sure :)

IMHO, if you have to search in a file cloud for something to click on then you've already lost the game.  Or perhaps that's just my carpal tunnel syndrome talking...

Bread crumbs are useful not just for file-to-file navigation but also within files.  I regularly use the VS built-in navigate back / forward commands to jump around.

Interesting idea - I really like the idea that unused files vanish from the cloud. How about closing the file at the same time (optionally, of course)?

I frequently find myself buried under too many tabs, especially after following some obscure code trail to isolate a pesky bug (unit tests? not so much..). Once I find the right file, I'm not relly interesting in how i got there - but I'd prefer to keep the starting file open, along with any other files I'm actively working on at the time..

Just knowing that the less interesting files will "fade away" after some time would improve my day.

Oh, and +1 for keyboard shortcuts for the cloud.