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There is some weird logic with opening sticky views and saving and restoring perspective state. I was surprised many times by Help view appearing out of nowhere after restarting the workbench. Try these scenarios. Working Scenario: 1. Have more than one perspective open. Ensure Help view is closed in all perspectives. Restart the workbench. 2. Press F1. Help view appears in the perspective - OK Switch to another perspective, Help view present - OK. Not Working Scenario: 1. Have more than one perspective open. Close Help view in all perspectives. Restart the workbench. 2. Browse through all open perspectives 3. Press F1. Help view appears in the perspective - OK Switch to another perspective, Help view not present - Problem. 4. While on the perspective without Help view, restart the workbench. The perspective still does not have the Help View. 5. Switch back to the perspective that has help view, restart the workbench like in step 4. Switch to the perspective that did not have the Help view, it now shows the Help View - Problem, it is a surprise as the result is different from step 4. 6. Close Help View in one perspective. Switch to another perspective. Help view is still there. I believe, for predictable behavior, sticky views should appear AND disappear simultaneously across all perspectives.
Kim, would you be able to investigate?
I will try and investigate for M7.
Raising to major. It is important to the usability Help view. Sad to not see it already fixed in M7. Without it Help view is annoying. It is designed to deliver assistance unobtrusively, and this bug makes the experience opposite. Open help view once and you are plagued by it when you don't need it.
I've improved the sticky state logic and made the result persistant across sessions. The issues you've raised should be addressed now, but perhaps others have been introduced. By my estimation things are OK but I'd appreciate someone at your end (the help end) take a look at this and see if the behaviour is adequate for 3.1.
Kim, if a perspective is closed and then reopened, do you need to reset the state? In the current change, I don't see any handling of the close case.
Reopening pending answer.
Actually, it was cleaning up after itself in disposePerspective but I did break that during the most recent checkin. Fixed in HEAD.
Konrad, are we now happy with the sticky Help view behaviour?
The definition of sticky view "... will appear by default across all perspectives ..." may be interpretted in various way, so we could argue details for very long. I will not. I have not encountered surprising appearance of help view out of nowwhere in recent builds when switching perspectives, so I am satisfied for 3.1. Thank you.
Konrad, the original spec for a sticky view was to have the 'feel' that the entire perspective stack has been pushed aside to make room for the view. This ways, perspective changes should have no effect on the view. I don't know what happens now when the view is closed in one perspective. That aspect is less clear to me - I remember asking for the view to go away from all perspectives but I don't think it happens like that today.
Dejan, I see opening the view shows it in all other perspectives that never had it (in workspace life time). From that point on, if you close the view in some perpspective, and open the view, the view will open only in the current perspective. That essentially makes the sticky view work like a regular view now. There is not much stickyness about it. This behavior does not justify having the fast view artifacts at all, but if this behavior ships in 3.1, we can use it for help view, there will be some minimal benefit to the new user in the first few minutes of using the product. Closing the view does not remove it from all perspectives, and without this implemented, the today's opening behavior is probably preferable. The view gets introduced, and is not annoying.
Closing a view in a non-visible perspective is actually quite a bit of work. Seeing as you're happy with the behaviour I will mark as verified.
Based on usability tests for our product, users are getting confused when they see the help view reappear when they change perspectives, after having closed the help view. They are expecting that when they close it in one perspective, it closes it in all other open perspectives, not just the active perspective. This behavior is described in #6 of the original reporter's bug report. Please consider reopening.
Hi Jamie, There were multiple, pretty bad, bugs with sticky view implementation that were all fixed. Point 6 is not a code defect. It is problem with the definition of the sticky view, and I do not think it is reasonable to reopen this defect. I am not sure it is appropriate to change definition, and affect all sticky views. It might be better to introduce improved sticky view, called differently, or having an additional attribute in its contribution such that it clarifies behavior across perspective. Consider opening a separate feature request, that addresses only that point.
Please see related bug #174213.
