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  1. Qt Creator
  2. QTCREATORBUG-13112

buggy and totally unfriendly UI in debugger pane

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    • Suggestion
    • Resolution: Duplicate
    • Not Evaluated
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    • Qt Creator 3.3.0-beta1
    • Debugger
    • None

    Description

      The debugger UI's table headers used to have an option to lock/unlock them, now that option has been removed and instead the user has to hover over a header and only then the "drag bar" becomes visible (and the pane can be moved around). This behavior is totally counter-intuitive, and i only discovered it because i knew that an option to unlock (and move around) the tabs was there in the previous versions, so i kept trying to play with the mouse until the "drag bar" became visible. The old "lock/unlock" pop-up menu options for the tabs was absolutely okay, people are used to having this option in a pop-up menu from other programs (not just from other IDEs, but from just about any other programs whose toolbars can be locked/unlocked and moved around from one position to another), so please give us back the old behavior with the "lock/unlock" option in the debugger's pop-up menu (and automatically hide/show the tabs' "drag bar" when the tabs are locked/unlocked). One little "optimization" change made without giving it a second thought and it totally ruined the whole user experience!

      PS
      On top of everything else, this design choice is also buggy: just try moving the mouse pointer over a table header (e.g. the "Name" header in the "Expression evaluator" tab); then, if you're not fast enough to click on the "Name" header, well... you're out of luck: the "drag bar" shows up and your mouse pointer becomes positioned over it instead of being over the "Name" header which has now gone down one line below, so you have to move the mouse again one line lower so that you can click the "Name" header. Well, at least that's what you'd expect, but no: once you move the mouse lower to get over the "Name" tab again), ooops, the table's "drag bar" disappears, the table headers move back up instead of remaining visible until you move the mouse pointer completely away from the table header's area, and you find your mouse pointer over the first item in the "Expression evaluator" pane instead of the table header you wanted to click. Yup, you're out of luck, try again!

      Bottom line:
      1) this hover-to-show-the-drag-bar "enhancement" is badly implemented: once the drag bar becomes visible it should stay like that until the mouse is moved away completely from the tab's header area
      2) even if the above fixed, this is a wrong UI design because it hides a critical feature (i.e. the ability to re-organize the tabs) away from the user

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              gyll Gyll
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