Community
Participate
Working Groups
Have you ever tried Intellij Idea's Java IDE ? If you have, you know how much good keyboard support can do for your "workflow" :) I suggest that Eclipse UI team should take a good look at Idea and its way of handling its "views" - especially the way they are easily hidden, but still shown in the side with a number, indicating which key to press together with "Alt" to display it again. Eclipse is ofcourse build to have many views, though one might make it possible to assign a shortcut to certain views or even better just assign a unique number to each view, which is the number that one have to enter when you press Alt. Or why stop at numbers, how about being able to assign just any kind of key or sequence of keys. e.g. Alt + e + l would give me the "Error Log". Another great enhancment would be to be able to cycle the between views/editors both internally in a panegroup and between panegroups with the arrow keys. e.g. If I have 5 editors open and the cursor is the first one the Alt + rightarrow would shift to the editor tab to the right and so forth. This Alt + arrowkeys could be generally applied to everything with a tab in eclipse. This solves the somewhat not-so-quick Ctlr-F6 editor navigation. Navigation between the group of editors/views could also be very easy by using e.g. Shift + Alt + arrowkeys to navigate to the view that is nearest in a certain direction. This allows me to use the screen to navigate, instead of forcing me to remember which specific key a specific view is assigned to. All this combined with a history of navigations which could quickly be traversed e.g. by Ctlr + Alt + arrowkeys (very much like it is done in Intellij Idea)
Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown is the usual accelerator for cycling between tabs. Numbering the views is tricky when the set of views is dynamic (other plugins can contribute views). It also doesn't work when you have 10 or more views. You can currently use Ctrl+F7 to switch between views, similar to Ctrl+F6 for editors. Your point about efficiency with the switchers is well taken though. We would also like to add a navigation history.
Where does one press Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown to switch between tabs ? In my eclipse 2.0 installation it just seem to ignore the Ctrl key and just do whatever PageUp/PageDown do in that particular view :( Regarding the "dynamic" addition of views I do not see it as a problem, if the keybindings are user configurable. Then I can just think up my own keycombination for a specific view. Secondly, handling more than 10 views should also be technical possible by e.g. use Alt-v to activate a simple entry of a number/string to do the switch. Another option would be to collect the keystrokes after Alt is pressed and see if it results in a number/string that is assigned to a view.
Sorry, I was unclear. Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown do not currently work for views and editors, but they do work for tab folders elsewhere, e.g. in the preferences page for Java / Editors (need to give focus to a control on the right first). Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown also work in other apps, e.g. Tools / Internet Options in IE.
There are currently no plans to work on this feature
