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Some suggestions that could be included


Joined: 09 Oct 2003
Posts: 60
Location: Bristol, England
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Hi,

I've been testing out phpEd for the last few days (just the sort of editor/debugger I've been looking for) and I've noted down some suggestions that I think would make it that much easier to use. They're just listed in the order that I thought of them.

Maybe some of you might like to comment on them, but it would be great to see them included in a future build (hopefully soon? Smile ).

- highlight lines by pointing to them in the left margin, without it setting a breakpoint. This could maybe be achieved by having two columns in the left margin. One for the numbers and one for setting the breakpoints. The number column could then be used do the line selection without affecting the breakpoints.

- when dragging a selection, it would be good to have the cursor move as well, to show exactly where the selection will be dropped.

- can't paste a search term into search box on help panel - have to type it in - annoying.

- would be nice to be able to re-execute code after changing it or a variable on the fly in a debugging session.

- would be good to have a skip command in the debugger to ignore a command.

- would be nice to have a visual indication of whether a file has been changed since the last save e.g. an asterisk after the filename on the file tab (like Dreamweaver) and greying out File/Save when no changes have been made since the last save.

- better defaults for the editor on installation (these ones should be switched on):
- Auto indent mode
- Insert mode
- Use tab character
- Backspace unindents
- Group Undo
- Cursor wraps at start of line
- Overwrite blocks
- Find text at cursor
- Found text as selection
- Overwrite cursor as block

and for the IDE (most of these are already OK, but I have changed a couple):
- Auto save workspace
- Auto save files
- Load last workspace at startup
- Confirm on copy/move folders
- Auto upload opened files
- Run in external browser
- Show file transfer errors

- would be nice to be able to navigate between open files using a keypress e.g. ctrl+page up to go left and ctrl+page down to go right. Wrapping between the last and first one would be good too.

- would be good to have a keypress sequence to bring up the code completion popup instead of just having it on or off.

- when switching between file tabs, the display is always moved to have the line with the cursor on at the top of the window - very annoying. It would be better to keep the display showing the same as when you left the file.

- backslashes '\' appear as yen symbols in the immediate window.

- given this code ($aCols["page_store"] == "empty") and having the "Double click line" setting off, when you try to double-click the ==, page_store is highlighted - how weird is that. After further use, I've noticed that this happens on every operator you double-click e.g. ==, <>, and, or, etc always seems to have the preceding variable name highlighted instead of what you double-clicked.

- ctrl+y would be better and more standardised as the redo keypress than shift+ctrl+z.

- when selecting a variable name, it would be useful to have a setting to control whether the leading $ is selected as well (like Dreamweaver).

- would be good to have a select whole words option (like Word), such that if you double-click to select a word then keep dragging the cursor, whole words continue to be selected rather than individual characters.

- given this code: explode("/", rtrim($strPath, "/")), code completion doesn't recognise the rtrim as a command and the code editor doesn't highlight it, but doing ctrl+f1 on it does work.

- would be more useful to keep the find box open after the find rather than closing it.

- would be good to have the code templates list sorted by name rather than chronologically, or even to have move up and move down buttons on the panel to manually order them.

- when dragging a selected line, when it's dropped, it is prefixed with spaces even though it was prefixed with tabs before. It would be better to leave the line as it was.

- would be nice to have a toggle for Group undo on the code editor window.

- if a line wraps to the following line in the editor window, selecting it only selects part of it (i.e. one physical line at a time). Would be better to have the whole logical line selected rather than just a physical line.

- would be nice to be able to see values of constants too.

Debbie-Leigh
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Joined: 13 Jul 2003
Posts: 8334
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Excellent. Cool
Thanks a lot for all your suggestions.
View user's profileFind all posts by dmitriSend private messageVisit poster's website
A few more suggestions


Joined: 09 Oct 2003
Posts: 60
Location: Bristol, England
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Hi,

Thought I'd be a bit more helpful and post a few more quirks that I've discovered. So here goes:

- when hovering over a variable in debugging mode and the variable has an & in it, the & doesn't show, however it does show in the locals window.

- when hovering over $HTTP_POST_FILES[$strFilename]["name"], the tooltip shows it as undefined, but it shows up correctly in the locals window.

- when you open a file to select and copy a piece of code, phpED seems to think the file has been changed even though it hasn't, as it prompts you to save the file when you close it.

- must repeat this one as it is getting very annoying Mad. When switching between file tabs, the display is always moved to have the line with the cursor on at the top of the window - very annoying. It would be better to keep the display showing the same as when you left the file.

- related to the previous one, when in split screen mode and switching between file tabs, both screens re-appear positioned to wherever the screen that had the focus was re-positioned i.e. it completely loses the positioning of the other screen.

Debbie-Leigh

P.S. Oh, and any idea of if or when we would see any solutions to these in phpED? Thanks.
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Some suggestions that could be included
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