Xojo IDE : Opinion

In regards to building a GUI using the Xojo IDE , what specific things do you like, do you dislkike (hate), or would like to see added. Note this question is about building GUI only, not about “code” (so things like auto-complete are not in the scope of this discussion). Just building a GUI (for desktop, web or iOS)

Pane splitting!

how would THAT improve building a GUI?

UI objects created through drag-and-drop should generate the code equivalent for these objects, like in Xcode. Also the entire UI should be controllable by code.
To much black-box behaviour in Xojo’s current UI builder.

What do I like ?

Drag & drop !

What could be nicer ?
Zoom in & out for better control & placement
Grouped controls - and NOT need ing to use a canvas, container, rectangle etc to move them about as a group

2 Likes

How would you select and manage a group of controls without needing at least a “lasso”?

To create the group sure a shift-click, or lasso, to select would be fine

But once grouped moving any one of them moves the group

Pages does this nicely

ok… that is how my latest prototype works

The good: drag and drop of controls, properties and methods. Also, the integration of UI design tools and associated source code is nice.
The bad: tabs changing location on their own. Currently, whenever I use Find or Debug and click an item that is already open in a tab, it opens in whatever tab is active instead of switching to the right tab. This causes duplicate tabs and an enormous waste of time to reopen the tab I was working on.
The ugly: a Project Navigator in every tab. This is very very hard to understand for me, I fail to see the logic. There is one project, so there must be one project navigator in its own pane. Tabs are for project items.