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Created attachment 261958 [details] Workspace Launcher's directory chooser dialog The "Workspace Launcher" dialog is kind of important. It's the first thing a user sees when launching an Eclipse IDE. It continues being the first thing seen unless a user checks the box to use the same workspace as a default. For new users, this dialog creates a first impression that will color the rest of their experience with Eclipse. For intermediate users, speed of use is important. On Windows, the "Browse" button on this dialog leads to a directory chooser that is limited, unfriendly, slow-to-use and out-of-date. The old directory chooser suffers from these limitations: * You can't type or paste any of the path to the desired folder. You're limited to mouse-clicking down a potentially complex and slow folder (and maybe network) hierarchy. * Favorites are not provided for fast access. * No search bar. * The current value is usually left outside the scroll area, when the dialog first appears. For example, in the attachment, "F:\foo\bar\xyzzy" is selected, but you can't see what's selected. Microsoft recommends the newer version beginning with Windows Vista, which was released in 2006. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762115%28VS.85%29.aspx says: "For Windows Vista or later, it is recommended that you use IFileDialog with the FOS_PICKFOLDERS option rather than the SHBrowseForFolder function. This uses the Open Files dialog in pick folders mode and is the preferred implementation." A similar defect has been filed for SWT in general (bug 443250). This defect addresses the significant effect on the Eclipse IDE.
Created attachment 261959 [details] Preferred directory chooser for Windows recommended by Microsoft This comes from MS Outlook's "Save All Attachments" action. Other examples exist as well.
(In reply to Andrew Thomas from comment #0) > A similar defect has been filed for SWT in general (bug 443250). This defect > addresses the significant effect on the Eclipse IDE. Once SWT offers a update directory picker, we can use it.
*** Bug 188743 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm interested in the bug, as I feel losing time with that dir selection dialog : add Installed JRE, add Eclipse Baseline Directory or Target Directory. I'm not sure whether this belongs to Platform, JFace or SWT.
(In reply to Patrik Suzzi from comment #4) > I'm not sure whether this belongs to Platform, JFace or SWT. I just realized that this bug depends on Bug 443250.
(In reply to Patrik Suzzi from comment #4) > I'm interested in the bug, as I feel losing time with that dir selection > dialog : add Installed JRE, add Eclipse Baseline Directory or Target > Directory. > > I'm not sure whether this belongs to Platform, JFace or SWT. SWT. The "right" native widgets must be first contributed by SWT.
Adding myself as cc as I do agree that the directory dialog feels really old. Coming from Ubuntu and trying eclipse on Windows I expected the directory dialog showed as attachment but got the non user-friendly old chooser dialog. I am willing to test any patches that could improve that user experience.
Support for modern directory dialog can be see from Eclipse I20171006-2000 on wards via bug 443250 in SWT. As expected, above SWT fix also fixed this bug 494331, now we get modern directory dialog in Work-space launcher's view as well, closing this bug. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 443250 ***
