Initial Comments

[Stuart Sanders]

I downloaded Firefly today and started on the first Tutorial.  My initial reaction is that I like Firefly, but one small interface "issue" (in quotes because maybe its just me) bugged me and another idea to simplify design time fiddling came to mind so I thought I'd make a post.

Perhaps some of these have already been mentioned, but even so it is worthwhile putting all of mine into one post.

The suggestions are:

1. In the properties workspace, it would be nice to be able to use the tab key (and shift-tab) to jump between the different properties.  At the moment it is mouse-click ... enter property ... mouse-click ... enter property.  Full keyboard support would be nice.

2. In the same properties workspace, even when I click with the mouse in a property that can only be typed (eg control size properties) I need to click again (or highlite the value after already clicking the property) before I can edit the property value.  

3. One thing I like about Word/Excel etc is the format copy control that allows me to setup one cell/paragraph how I would like and then copy the format onto other paragraphs/cells.  Something like this would be nice in firefly, particularly since many forms have multiple controls that are essentially the same except for position and name.  Ideally two different options would be nice.
3a - a format copy that copies control format - Window styles, colours, font etc.
3b - a format copy that does all of 3a plus copying the vertical and horizontal lengths.

This would make setting up a series of almost identical controls (ie lables and textboxes) a breeze.

Anway thanks for the hard work and I'll keep giving it a work-out during the demo period.

-Stuart

[TechSupport]

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for taking the time to post your initial reactions. Some of your points have been raised before, but they are still valid nonetheless.

1. In the properties workspace, it would be nice to be able to use the tab key (and shift-tab) to jump between the different properties.  At the moment it is mouse-click ... enter property ... mouse-click ... enter property.  Full keyboard support would be nice.

Hard to argue with that point. Full keyboard support in the Workspace would great.

2. In the same properties workspace, even when I click with the mouse in a property that can only be typed (eg control size properties) I need to click again (or highlite the value after already clicking the property) before I can edit the property value.  

In an earlier beta version of FireFly I actually had this type of feature in there. However, there were several problems with the way that keyboard focus affected other areas of the designer. I had to remove that feature at that point. I'll revisit the issue again to see if it can be done. I agree - it would be a super feature.

3. One thing I like about Word/Excel etc is the format copy control that allows me to setup one cell/paragraph how I would like and then copy the format onto other paragraphs/cells.  Something like this would be nice in firefly, particularly since many forms have multiple controls that are essentially the same except for position and name.  

FireFly can do these somewhat, however it usually takes two steps instead of one. Create your controls and then select them. Make sure that the control that has the properties that you wish to populate to the other controls is selected as the active control (blue grippers). Then select "Format", "Properties", "Apply Properties to Group". That function will apply all the common properties of the active control to the other select controls. Note: All controls must be of the same type (i.e. all TextBoxes, all Labels, etc...).