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Whenever I want to open an existing project on Windows, I get a file chooser opened on My Documents. But new projects are created by default in the user home dir - so I have to navigate to the root of the drive, then into Documents and Settings/tim to find them. Probably projects should be created in My Documents on windows.
I believe the Open Project dialog just defaults to ${user.home} or whatever dir you last opened a project from.
Not a P5. Consider how annoying this is - if you reinstall or run with a clean user dir, you cannot find any of your existing projects unless you know (many people don't) that they're put in "C:\Documents and Settings\username". The new project wizard quietly puts it in your home dir - most people will not even notice where it's going - the UI does a *good* job of making it simple to create a project - simple enough that it doesn't draw attention to where it's being created. Now you create a project somewhere else on your disk, and you want to reopen the first project you created. Where is it? There's a nice big My Documents button on the left in the file chooser. Nope, not there. In fact, there's no direct access to the home dir without navigating through the root of the drive. Further, try this on Windows: Start with a clean user dir. Create a new project. Close it. Choose Open Project. Where's your project? Assuming you noticed, you have to navigate to the root of the drive and drill through Documents and Settings to find it. This *is* a serious usability problem - we don't want someone's first experience with NetBeans being creating a project and having it disappear.
Trung, do you know something about it?
Trung writes (separately): ---%<--- C:\Documents and Settings\ttran this is ${user.home} on Windows and is offered as the default in many file/dir choosers. this is pretty dumb. I'll fix it for new/open project and open file wizard. if windows && ${user.home} starts with <any char>:\ set file chooser's currentdir to "<any char>:\" fi Okay? ---%<--- Or just patch core to change the user home dir to something else during startup. A mild -0 from me; prefer to ask the JRE team to choose a more meaningful user.home on Windows, or somehow make the file chooser better aligned with this system property, or introduce a different system property for "user documents and files", etc. Note that after you use the dialog in a given session, the last dir is supposed to be used the next time you open it.
> Note that after you use the dialog in a given session, the last dir is > supposed to be used the next time you open it. Probably the new project wizard should also set this directory when a new project is created (this would semi-solve the problem except in the case of a clean userdir but existing projects).
the original bug report has very little to do with the Jesse's and Tim's last comments. Nonetheless, I agree with Jesse that my tweaking would be done better in JRE. Re choosing a more sensible ${user.home}: Nope. the current mapping is correct. that's the only dir on Windows which can be considered per-user. Re patching ${user.home}: Nope The correct solution, IMO, would be fixing Windows L&F file chooser to match the native one. In the current state it's bad out-of-box experience. Not usability problem per se, it "only" makes the IDE look stupid
fixed. Now the IDE offers C:\ instead of C:\Document and Settings\joeuser as the default in project choosers and open file chooser
I reverted the patch
David, please look at the original issue Tim reported. You're one of the few on Windows. Thx
I changed the project open to default to user dir too. Fixed in: src/org/netbeans/modules/project/ui/OpenProjectListSettings.java new revision: 1.12; previous revision: 1.11
I saw one strange thing: if you change folder to <d:\Document and Settings\username\My Dodocuments\> in new proejct wizard it will claim that this folder is readonly. I found that java.io.File.canWrite really returns false for this and couple of other system-like folders: <d:\Document and Settings\username\Desktop\>, <d:\Document and Settings\username\Application Data\>. Could somebody else please check it on their windows that it is really does not work? Looks like JDK bug. I tried both 1.4.2 and 1.5.0.
This issue was solved long time ago. Because nobody has reopened it neither added comments, we are verifying/closing it now. If you are still able to reproduce the problem, please reopen. Thanks in advance.