Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | [UX] Usability: Provide a "File > Recently Opened Files" menu | ||
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| Product: | [Eclipse Project] Platform | Reporter: | Martin Oberhuber <mober.at+eclipse> |
| Component: | IDE | Assignee: | Platform UI Triaged <platform-ui-triaged> |
| Status: | NEW --- | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | enhancement | ||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | daniel_megert, remy.suen |
| Version: | 3.6 | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | All | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
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Description
Martin Oberhuber
(In reply to comment #0) > Most users > of other Editors or IDE's expect having a "File > Recently Opened Files" menu > for navigating to files they had previously visited but closed. We have a dynamic menu at the bottom between 'Properties' and 'Exit' that shows the last N recently opened files (where N can be tweaked in the 'General > Editors' preferences). How does this enhancement request exactly differ from this list? (In reply to comment #1) > (In reply to comment #0) > > Most users > > of other Editors or IDE's expect having a "File > Recently Opened Files" menu > > for navigating to files they had previously visited but closed. > > We have a dynamic menu at the bottom between 'Properties' and 'Exit' that shows > the last N recently opened files (where N can be tweaked in the 'General > > Editors' preferences). > > How does this enhancement request exactly differ from this list? Correct. That gives faster access than another nested menu. I have the following usability problems with the current approach: 1. The approach without menu nesting doesn't scale well to lots of files. The Preference is limited to 15 entries. 2. The current list shows the _recently opened_ files, but I am more interested in _recently closed_ files. Because those that I recently opened are typically available as editor tabs anyways. Example: Create new file foo.txt and close the editor --> The file is not in the recent list, how to find it again for continued editing? Example: dbl click on about.html in a Java/PDE workspace. You will get 2 new entries in the "recent" list (one for about.html, the other for the web browser). 2 older, likely more interesting entries are thrown out of the list. I know that apps like MS Office 2000 also have a list of recent files directly in the file menu. But these apps do not have editor tabs. Most editors that I know of have a sub-menu for recent files such that the submenu can hold lots of recent files. I do not buy the "faster access since no submenu" argument because I do not need access to the recent list so frequently. For those default 4 items I have there, I can use the editor tabs. I'd be interested in 20 items and would thus prefer a submenu. (In reply to comment #3) > 2. The current list shows the _recently opened_ files, but I am more > interested in _recently closed_ files. Recently opened but actually recently closed. This could be confusing to the user. I certainly was confused by the original bug summary. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. |