Sorry, but I’m experiencing continuing major frustrations with Servoy’s debugger. Doesn’t make sense to suffer in silence. All of these issues have to do with the user interface, in other words “real world” usability.
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The green Run button is set right next to the “next step” button. It’s damned easy (as I did yet again just a moment ago) to slip and click the Run button when you’re intending to step through. That Run button needs to go elsewhere, well separated from the debugging controls.
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A terminate button that actually terminates all methods associated with the current process. What the terminate button does depends on the complexity of the currently active method chain. Sometimes clicking Terminate will halt the process and leave the user in the current method. But sometimes Terminate will continue running processes continuing to change data and dropping the user in a very different method, often with error messages along the way. No doubt there’s an underlying logic to this behaviour but to this user the Terminate button is willful.
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A Call Stack feature – where has the process been and where is it now. If such exists, I don’t know of it. Which brings up a point about the paucity of the debugger’s documentation. Several of the features are a mystery and therefore not used. A few pages of an illustrated tutorial would go a long way in making the debugger a more useful tool.
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The last is easily the most important. Give me a clear visual signal of whether the debugger is enabled or not. Yes, I can and indeed do check the “enable/disable” text in the debugger and from the Developer’s Tools menu. But that’s so left brain. Forget to check, click something and have unwanted processes initiated. User interfaces are really about right brain. What’s required is a colour change to something in both Developer and Editor indicating the modal change of debugger enabled.
Kind regards,