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Friday, 11 May 2007

It's the little things....

Posted on 17:41 by Unknown
That take the longest to program. This may surprise non-programmers, but won't surprise anyone who has done UI development before.

Example: in WED, there is a spreadsheet-like view (the "property" view) that shows text-based information, usually with a list of runways or taxiways in one direction and different aspects of them (name, displaced threshhold length, surface, etc.) on the other.

In WED, if you press the tab key while editing text, WED will move to the next editable field, first across, then down. Furthermore, it will scroll the view as needed so you don't need to adjust the scrollbars while working. The result is that you can, for example, use the mouse to select all of your taxiways, and then rename every single one of them from the keyboard with the tab key without ever going back to the mouse.

It's a small UI feature that can make a big difference in how long it takes to work on a project, and takes surprisingly long to code.
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