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(At least) if you have a lot of modules installed, the Window menu is quite crowded. By that I mean that there are a lot of entries and those are not sorted too well and not divided into groups by delimiters. In essence, there should be more logical grouping of realted functionality to make accessing the functionality more intuitive and hence faster. ...and looking at the Tools menu, I basically think the same. How about putting all the managers there (i.e. Java Platform Manager, Server Manager, Library Manager, etc.) under one common Tools submenu (obviously) named Managers? ...and the same with the databases (i.e. Derby, Pointbase etc.) also?
Re: "if you have a lot of modules installed..." and that's the problem. NetBeans has an extensible modular architecture. On one hand, that's good because users can install additional functionality as they need. On the other hand, it also has its drawbacks as additional modules that don't behave as good citizens in the IDE may pollute the UI or interfere with existing functionality. Both the Window and (especially) Tools menus have been cleaned up and simplified in NB 5.0. Many actions have been moved to the new Go To and Source menus to make the structure of menus more logical. More improvements are probably possible, but the standard NB 5.0 IDE menus are quite polished at the moment. However, if you're using any Beta/Aplha quality modules from the update centers, then it may be a different story. If thats the case, specific bugs should be filed against those modules. It would also help if you could provide screenshots of menus that you call Crowded/Unorganized. Thanks.
Created attachment 25405 [details] Tools window
Comment to the "Tools window" attachement: All the different "Manager" entries (e.g. "Java Platform Manager", "NetBeans Platform", "Server Manager" etc.) could be grouped together under a submenu "Managers" (e.g. "Java Platforms", "NetBeans Platforms", "Server Manager", etc.) I guess the above are all core menu entries and not from later installed modules but they could already be nicely grouped. And for external modules can you provide guidelines that they have to follow where entries in the menu appear? Two examples: 1) The Profiling menu entries ("Select Profiling XYZ..." and "Add as Profiling XYZ...") should be put together under the common "Profile" subentry. 2) The "Derby Database" and "Pointbase Database" could be put under a common "Databases" submenu entry. Should I file bug entries for the two databases and the profiler, if I understand your comment correctly? Also why is the "Palette Customizer" entry pretty much on the bottom of the menu and the "Add to Palette..." on the top and not together? ...and another small thing: Why are some entries indented in the menu and other are not? It does not look consitent.
Hmm, I see. Pretty bad. Have you installed all modules available on all update centers and the contrib site? :-) FWIW, here's what the Tools menu is supposed to look like in the standard 5.0 IDE...
Created attachment 25406 [details] Standard Tools menu in 5.0 Beta.
Well, I can also see your point now! Your menu looks quite minimalistic compared to mine... :-) ...but firstly: I think a lot of people will download a couple of modules from the download center and hence run in the same trouble I do. Perhaps not as if you install all modules, but still... ;-) ...and secondly: already in the regular menu the managers should be grouped together. (I think at least.)
Created attachment 25566 [details] Patch that augments menu items with FQN of the action corresponding action (does not work for all actions).
Just to keep you informed: We (part of nbusability) concluded that individual bugs should be filed against modules which put an icon into Tools menu, Tools menu is designed to not contain any icon. Then alignment of Tools menu will be just fine. Re other complaints - we won't use submenus, it's proven from usability studies that submenus makes discoverability and learnability harder. So Window and Tools menu will stay long if there are many extra modules installed. We think it's better then to have many submenus. We also discussed the order and we feel current state is relatively OK. However we will listen to users' voice furter and change order accordingly if needed.
Ok, if usability experts say that submenus are not that good - well - they are the experts and will know... But myself, colleagues I asked and (seemingly) others on the NetCAT list don't fully subscribe to the this statement. What my colleagues and I particularly did not like was the amount of managers and their not being grouped together. "Why is the Module Manager not together with the other managers?", "Why isn't there a specific menu for managers?" were two of the questions I got back when I showed them the picture I also have attached to this issue. So if there can be no submenu, please group the functionality at least nicely together.
Bug 66336 (its duplicate in reality) is fixed, which means that tools menu is now aligned correctly and icons are gone. So this part was fixed. Usability talks: Submenus - they are bad because they require extra click or key press, which compromises usability. Also, users seem to have troubles finding/exploring actions that are hidden in submenus. Having "Managers" submenu or grouped is I think developer's point of view, which perfectly fits into coding (group related things into class ect) but in UI design, having the word "Manager" repeated six times in menu is OK. Also, Module manager has quite different purpose then other managers, that's why it is separated. I'm closing this bug as wontfix, because part of original complaints was fixed, but bigger part was found OK in current state. If you still disagree in some specific point, please create new report containing only that specific complaint, thanks.
verified (but I am not really happy with this...)