OK, I give up!
What is the trick to using the Lefts/Rights/Tops/Bottoms align buttons on the toolbars? Even with two (or more) objects on the form selected, but these buttons remain grayed out. And in the Elements->Align menu only To Grid is not grayed out.
This has been the case at least since 2.2.
Is this a known issue or am I just missing something really basic and I am about to end up with a few keycaps in my forehead?
kazar
I think you are missing something. What, I am not sure, the align button work fine on my system (Windows XP - Servoy 3.0.2). They do exactly what you you expect.
does not seem to be impelmented on Mac, then.
Is there more to it than just selecting multiple objects on the form? I would expect the buttons and menu choices to become available after multi-selecting objects. I asked a Mac-based colleague about this some weeks ago and he saw the same problem on his laptop. (He had just never noticed it because he uses Align To Grid and it just wasn’t natural to him to want to use the Align buttons or menu)
If one more person with a Mac handy could confirm the problem I’ll submit a bug report. Also curious to know if this is considered a known issue? (I tried searching the forums but did not turn up any complaints about this)
kazar
Never mind! I just re-did a forum search and found the answer from Jan A. at http://forum.servoy.com/viewtopic.php?p=3300#3300 . The buttons & menu choices are indeed grayed out (a known issue) but they still actually work (I had not thought to try clicking an inactive-appearing button!)
kazar
Hi Ilyse
In my environment the buttons work (although greyed out), but the same menu commands, i. e. Elements > Align > Lefts for example don’t work!
BTW, why are the Distribute buttons NOT greyed out (isn’t that similar to the Align buttons?) but the according menues Elements > Distribute > horizontal Spacing for example don’t work?
When I am at it, as little .-) wish to the the alignment/distribute commands I would like the Upward/Leftward functionality would read the Grid size set in Preferences - now they seem to take (hard coded?) 8 px. The big wish is to have somethingin the direction of Interface Builder/Matisse (NetBeans). Ok, ok, Chrismas is coming soon and I said it just as a wish
More seriously, I think the interface builder in Servoy is a part with much potential to save development time and has seen not much improvements and is far away from the capabilities for example the above mentioned interface builders. But may be there is even something to come in this respect in the foreseeable future?
Best regards, Robert
kazar:
Never mind! I just re-did a forum search and found the answer from Jan A. at http://forum.servoy.com/viewtopic.php?p=3300#3300 . The buttons & menu choices are indeed grayed out (a known issue) but they still actually work (I had not thought to try clicking an inactive-appearing button!)kazar
I agree, Robert, in that I would like to see the rough edges polished on the IDE. For example, you say the Distribute buttons work, and they do. But after you click one of those buttons, although the Undo choice is active in the Edit menu, it does not seem to undo the object distribution change. And scads of other little things.
kazar
Hello Ilyse
I also think a clean interface s not only polish, it allows for speedy, high quality work and gives you on the other hand confidence that the tool developers are really looking at their own tool as well (as a long standing “example” the font and size popups, which are cut off by one or two pixels, already like this as long as I work with Servoy) and yes I know may be there is no better software produced because of this (corrected), but …
In this respect I think Apple is also nowadays a very good example of someone who just gets it’s software right. It’s not by accident that people love iTunes and all the other iApps (and non i apps .-)
But Matisse or Interface Builder have not only to do with polish, they have real great functionality not seen in (m)any other IDEs.
Best regards, Robert
kazar:
I agree, Robert, in that I would like to see the rough edges polished on the IDE. For example, you say the Distribute buttons work, and they do. But after you click one of those buttons, although the Undo choice is active in the Edit menu, it does not seem to undo the object distribution change. And scads of other little things.kazar
I also think a clean interface s not only polish, it allows for speedy, high quality work …
A smoother form-design experience would be lovely and help us to make beautiful UIs more easily, true, and Servoy Developer itself would also look that much more like a “professional’s tool” to folks who are playing with it for the first time.
But, I do wish to add to to these sentiments, that the overall approach to designing solutions with Servoy is already saving me a huge amount of time vis-a-vis my previous main tool (FMP). So much of the aggravation I used to experience designing well-done applications has been alleviated by using Servoy instead; I would not choose to ‘go back’, would you? So (in spite of my occasional grumbling) I am glad that the main focus in the product’s development thus far has been to building up Servoy’s feature set and its deployment possibilities. Anyway, as I understand it, the IDE is indeed scheduled for an overhaul.
kazar
Hello Ilyse
kazar:
I also think a clean interface s not only polish, it allows for speedy, high quality work …
A smoother form-design experience would be lovely and help us to make beautiful UIs more easily, true, and Servoy Developer itself would also look that much more like a “professional’s tool” to folks who are playing with it for the first time.
I agree a 100%
But, I do wish to add to to these sentiments, that the overall approach to designing solutions with Servoy is already saving me a huge amount of time vis-a-vis my previous main tool (FMP). So much of the aggravation I used to experience designing well-done applications has been alleviated by using Servoy instead; I would not choose to ‘go back’, would you? So (in spite of my occasional grumbling) I am glad that the main focus in the product’s development thus far has been to building up Servoy’s feature set and its deployment possibilities. Anyway, as I understand it, the IDE is indeed scheduled for an overhaul.
kazar
As always in such discussions it depends on the what to compare to. Certainly Servoy has some very handy functionality, and just got one we were waiting impatiently, namely the multideveloper with the possibility of editing modules without loading again and again the corresponding solution - thanks Servoy developers! but has some fundamental weakness (our opinion only of course) in some areas like the order of events called with various modules, the registering (or the absence of) events or the handling of relationships, to mention a few. And although they have been rejected by Servoy we still hope they make it into the tool someday, if other people are coming to Servoy from let’s say developers also working (or worked) with Small Talk, WebObjects etc.
But of course I also know it’s always much easier to ask for functionality than implement it into the whole context of a development tool without destroying the tools general concepts and goal.
Best regards, Robert
As always in such discussions it depends on the what to compare to. Certainly Servoy has some very handy functionality …… but has some fundamental weakness …… if other people are coming to Servoy from let’s say developers also working (or worked) with Small Talk, WebObjects etc.
Do you feel that is a fair comparison? Servoy would make a major mistake to depart from its fundamental mission: RAD development of back-end agnostic solutions using pure standards on the front end inside an OS-agnostic JRE. Small Talk, as far as I know, is a programming language that requires compiling. WebObjects is powerful but hardly RAD and, also AFAIK, does not have a rich client.
So when it comes to “comparing”, maybe we should invite any skeptical WO and S-T developers to the next RAD Race at ServoyWorld '07 … and not only do they need to create the specified solution, it needs to be ready to run on all platforms before their task is considered complete.
kazar
Hello Ilyse
Actually, I didn’t want to compare development tools. I would have liked to say look at this tools to see how to make things right, for example event registering/event listening (hierachy).
WebObjects has beside “traditional” programming DirectTo Web and DirectToJava, which creates either a Web Application or a fat Java Client, the same result as we get with Servoy as well, i.e. the anser is WO does have a rich Java client.
A RAD race is surely a pleasure event, but doesn’t say much about the tool, because developing serious applications are not done in that way. Or would you take the code (no italien word her .-) which is produced at a RAD race as your business fundamentals? Then why do all these companies evaluate/buy/internally build all the Frameworks and Java Classes in a time consuming/costly process?
So there is no need to defend Servoy, everyone (or at least most) can choose freely. I just mention it if I think it can be done better (often with the same effort), hope you can accept that.
Best regards, Robert
kazar:
As always in such discussions it depends on the what to compare to. Certainly Servoy has some very handy functionality …… but has some fundamental weakness …… if other people are coming to Servoy from let’s say developers also working (or worked) with Small Talk, WebObjects etc.
Do you feel that is a fair comparison? Servoy would make a major mistake to depart from its fundamental mission: RAD development of back-end agnostic solutions using pure standards on the front end inside an OS-agnostic JRE. Small Talk, as far as I know, is a programming language that requires compiling. WebObjects is powerful but hardly RAD and, also AFAIK, does not have a rich client.
So when it comes to “comparing”, maybe we should invite any skeptical WO and S-T developers to the next RAD Race at ServoyWorld '07 … and not only do they need to create the specified solution, it needs to be ready to run on all platforms before their task is considered complete.
kazar