Eclipse 4diac Wiki/4days Of 4diac/Usability Session 2019

At the 2019 4days of 4diac we had a dedicated session on usability issues of 4diac IDE. The following points where identified:

FBN Editor

• Palette
  • Double-click on type => open type editor
  • Use type-specific icons like in system explorers type library
• Allow comments on everything
  • At least inputs/outputs of FB instances are missing
• Allow attributes on everything
  • Attributes, which are user-defined metadata as key-value pairs
  • "Attributes" tab in the property pane
• Do not adjust FB size to title size -> done in [1]
  • Make FB titles multi-line
  • ... or use smart truncation: ellipsis in the middle, with full name tool-tip
• Mouse interaction with FBs is too overloaded
  • This is somewhat by design, but still worth improving
  • FB rename mode only triggers when clicking the title twice (like windows explorer rename, not double-click) -> done in [2]
  • Open instance viewer/type editor on double click outside of ports/title
    • Maybe type editor as a context menu entry instead?
• Improve literal value editing for input ports
  • Add context menu entry for input ports: "set literal value"
  • Fix position of empty "literal value" edit box
  • Popup tooltip with port comment and type syntax/example
  • Use inline Xtext editor for syntax-checking
• Improve visualisation for drag&drop errors (esp. connections)
  • Popup tooltip explaining why a given target is not a valid drop site
  • Do this while dragging is in progress, or after dropping at invalid site
• TODO Offer an alternative to the palette
  • double click on empty space opens textbox that searches through types
  • popdown-completion for search term
  • history of past blocks when search term is empty

Type Editor

• Improve mass creation of ports
  • Existing workflow: use property sheet to create many instances quickly
  • Problem: changing type on every port via mouse is tedious
  • Suggestion: change "Type" column to use a combo-box with auto-complete or a cell-editor instead of the current popup list
• "Edit Events" property sheet: rename "Inputs" labels to "event inputs"
  • Improves visual distinction between "Edit Events" and "Edit Data"
  • Same for "Outputs" table
• Use an adaptive layout for input/output property tables
  • Change to a vertical arrangement (top inputs/bottom outputs) for people dragging the property pane to the right window edge
  • Maybe use pane aspect ratio to decide?

System Editor

• "Attributes" property sheet should use new add/delete/reorder widget

Resource View

• Boxes around individual applications
  • Rationale:
    • No overlap => resource view becomes much more usable
    • Different visual => less likely to confuse app editor and resource editor
  • Draw a shaded box around/behind each application
  • Nested boxes for subapps
  • Separate application boxes
  • Allow to collapse application boxes

System Explorer

• Add a search field
  • Contra: use eclipse's global search instead
• Split type library into read-only standard library and custom types
  • two predefined subfolders

Global UI

• Tab names have no visual hint for associated project
• Add documentation pane
  • Could reside under palette, or shared with the outline pane
  • Always shows information relevant to the most recently selected item
    • Comment
    • For types, subapps, FBs: Graphical view of interface definition for types
    • For states inside ECCs: Algorithm preview
    • For types, subapps, FBs: FBN/ECC outline?
    • For systems/devices/resources: content outline?
    • ... and other sources of documentation
    • maybe add instance status summary as well?
      • Rationale: property pane might have other information as default view
      • FB count for systems/devices/resources
      • user-specified attributes
  • From anywhere, i.e. selection in palette, FBN editor, system explorer
• Add open-document view to the System Explorer pane
  • Flat list of open tabs
  • Grouped by project
• Add a "Useful tips" startup notification
  • Not a dialog, that is too annoying
  • Notification bar (like in browsers, MS Office) that closes itself after a while
• Add toolbar buttons and keybindings for direct creation of new types
  • separate actions for basic, composite, SIFBs
  • alternatively improve the type creation dialog to be less cluttered
    • no scrolling through type list, just make the four types selectable with a simple click/keyboard action
    • default folder something like "Type Library/Custom Types"
    • use clicked folder as default folder if invoked via system explorer context menu
• Sort tabs by project and separate projects by a visual separator

Property Sheets

• Order of sub-tabs is inconsistent
• Order of sub-tabs should be optimised for usage frequency
  • "Type Info" is the worst choice for default sub-tab
• Edit function of tables not discoverable enough
  • "Click to edit" hint or something similar
  • Might apply to other panes and dialogs as well
• Add keybinding to change property pane sub-tabs
  • Also make sure the default focus after tab change is sensible