Hi JL,
In defense of the UI design.
First you have to look at it as it should appear. A Screen shot was posted.
I've already commented on the UI looks on another reply.
if you are looking up a Free Pascal item just click on the name "ContainsText".
{Very long winded explanation of something that should be intuitive}
From what I've seen from looking at a bit of your code and now this long winded explanation, you're making the user do stuff that you could do in programming.
I don't think the notion of "programming to ease human life" as quite sunk into you.
Why does the user have to click on the button Dataset? This should be a check on
FormCreate() or implemented via the very intuitive
File->Load paradigm.
Why is information flow form right to left, when most of the standards make it left to right? Is this a eastern/asian focused application?
If you look at most standard UIs, you'll have a
TListBox on the left with your options and then the info panel on the right, right?
And lastly, your UI should thrive to be intuitive, not the kind of UI that doesn't have Main Menus, Context SubMenus and has to be explained by 15+ paragraphs.
At this point I don't know what I'm going to do with this other that I use it every day for FPC reference.
The point I'm trying to make is: If this is a tool
YOU use and
YOU are comfortable with, keep at it and that's all right. It's your baby, you love it no matter what other's say.
BUT If you're gonna release it into the wild, then you have to take criticism like all the rest of us.
Conventions were invented to normalise our day to day usage of things, that's why Microsoft invests million in studies about UIs.
Then we all, in the wild, read them, understand them and
IMPLEMENT them, because we want to be kind to our users.
But we also want to be kind to our fellow programmers because we want our
babies to be maintained after we die, or leave a company, so we also have nice looking and
READABLE code.
All that I've criticised about your UI and code should not be taken as a personal attack, just a though love approach to make you consider getting out of your blinders and pay attention to the world around you.
MarkMLI was right when he said that your app is not the best this community has to offer. He said that because of your complete disregard of the standards that have been agreed and fought over the years by more intelligent and kinder programmers that came before us.
So in conclusion, if you want this little utility app to be accepted, first you'll have to comply with standards and then explain, to all of us, why your thing is better than the
self-updating resources that we have now?
Cheers,
Gus