There is a natural confusion between "easy to learn" and "thing i learned years ago and internalized".
We are all biased, and the more experience we gain with some tool - the stronger becomes the bias.
Now two clicks are needed to start compilation: Select "Dwarf 3", then "OK" - in the old dialog I only clicked on "Dwarf 3", and that was it.
Needed is one click, on OK button or even just hitting "Enter" key.
But if you disagree with IDE's default, then i believe forcing a second click is actually good. It is only done once per project.
Actually, mere providing default choice defuses the confusion. Old dialog was a total show stopper: what butotn should developer select to have enerything good and nothing bad? the old dialog sis not provide help... And this confusion would be partially restored if to switch task dialog from "radiobuttons design" to "vertical command buttons" design, as presented in screenshots on prior pages.
And why is there a "Run with no debugger" button so prominently close to the "OK" button; I am a left-to-right reading person and it always strikes my attention unnecessarily.
Because there is no "menu break" in the button bar. More so, the leftmost position there is reserved for "verification checkbox".
So, if keeping the general "radiogroup and horizontal "common buttons bar" approach, alternatives would be:
- make no-debug into a radiobutotn, as one of debug formats
- OK / Run no debug / Cancel
- OK / Cancel / Run no debug
I preserved "standard" OK/Cancel positioning as right-bottom pair.
When i did full-custom proposal initially, there were space gaps between button, hinting at logical grouping.
99% of my compilations are running with debugger, and I don't want to change my mind after having decided to press F9.
Agree, but this should not be fixed by redesigning the dialog.
IDE should pre-select it to users without showing this dialog, this dialog should be reserved too later edge cases, that many developers would not ever meet.
When ther is "no dialog" - no argument about its design :-)
Therefore the question mark icon of the old dialog is much more appropriate.
Which reiterates the Microsoft guidelines i quoted above :-) Sometimes Microsoft can produce more than marketing BS.
I agree. The "overwarning" ((c) MS) is really a bad habit.
I also don't know whether the pseudo-help text at the bottom is needed;
It is. The old dialog induces fear and is a road block. Much more that warning icon..
it is clear that all compilation settings can be changed in the project options.
No, it is not. What clear is you having many years experience of doing it. But for persons with no experience it is not so.
- There is no a priori warranty that every change can be undone. When i create e-mail account in mail programs, once i selected POP3 or IMAP i almost never can reconfigure the acocunt, i would only be able to delete it andcreate new one. And before you say "this is no mail account, this is just a project options" - you can only say it exactly out of the many years experience with both, that not everyone has.
- Even if user thinks after the fact changing some setting is good thing, it does not warrant that Lazarus team had the same opinion
- Even if Lazarus team had the same opinion, it does not warrant they implemented such a retroactivechange. It could had been complex, or could had been very low priority
- Even if Lazarus team implemented it - who knows where? Lazarus has dozens of windows, and those have dozens of tabs/sections.Memorizing them all might take years.
This notice for novices defuses the confusion and tells them "here is no danger, you can easily change your mind".
And no other IDE dialog gives a hint on visiting the project options.
Which is misfeature in those dialogs, hopefuully incrementalyl fixed.
Even if TTaskDialog is ditched and some other more LCL-ish deisgn would be set upon sas "new IDE standard".
The old dialog, on the other hand, is very clear: It describes what is going on and asks me to press one of the buttons.
without documenting the consequences of it.
From a novice PoV the old dialog is similar to "shell game" - choose your loss and give us a pretext to blame you of it, except that shell game typically only has 3 shells, while the old dialog had five (including the [X] in the top-right corner).