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The Add Property as currently implemented has some issues as noted in the recent usability test: 1. When the user chooses the property name, it should not immediately jump to a new location in the list. This is very disconcerting and easy to lose track of. In Dreamweaver CS6, for example, while the properties may be displayed in ascending alphabetical order, the property stays where it is as long as that style's properties are displayed. When the property set refreshes due to navigation, the properly is correctly displayed in ascending alphabetical order. 2. Since Add Property should only apply to the case where we're displaying updated properties only, it should be positioned immediately beneath the last property as shown in the spec. Again, this reduces the sense of displacement while working. 3. Add Property lets you add to a minimized file, and then the property disappears. It takes a while to notice an error message (which doesn't communicate anything clearly) and realize you need to navigate to the source of the error and look for the problem.
#1: The current implementation is a workaround for lack of support for such UI tweaks in the generic property editor. If PE supports customizing content (injection of own component + handling the flow and controls) of the first column cells then I'm fine with removing the "Add Property" JCB from the bottom of the RE. OTOH almost everyone I talked with about it was satisfied with the flow, which proves quickly can people get used to bad designs :-) #2: just consequence of the #1 workaround, will be fixed once we fix #1 #3: I believe this is duplicate of [Bug 220180] Any change in a one line rule via RuleEditor causes the RE to become empty.
I've filed issue 220255 - Add ability to set custom cell render and editor for property names and we'll try to work out some solution with Standa
Created attachment 126880 [details] Patch for the add property behavior I've created a patch for this issue as Standa made necessary support for me on the property sheet side. However some unexpected issues arose which requires more changes on both sides. As we are very close to beta branch it seems quite dangerous to put such changes now as it is very likely it will break some flows at least on some platforms/L&Fs. So I'm putting this change to post-beta builds. If we managed to address all issue tomorrow and anyone really insisted on this to be in beta, we may possibly transplant it tomorrow.
fixed in web-main#33c5d5dbd3ed pushed along with Standa's changes to property sheet. Stando, I've done two ugly hacks for missing/wrong functionality - see my code comments at RuleEditorNode:1193 and possibly address somehow in PS. Thanks
Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *201211070001* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress) Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/33c5d5dbd3ed User: Marek Fukala <mfukala@netbeans.org> Log: #220213 - Add Property behavior is not smooth
I've improved the hack in core-main 028349b4d468
verified, added property stays at the position until one closes the dialog Product Version: NetBeans IDE 7.3 RC1 (Build 201301172100) Java: 1.7.0_10; Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 23.6-b04 Runtime: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 1.7.0_10-b18 System: Linux version 3.2.0-35-generic-pae running on i386; UTF-8; en_US (nb)