Re: [platform-ui-dev] Proposal - Context and pulldown menus affecting re

["Randy Giffen/OTT/OTI" <Randy_Giffen@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks for your comments. They come at a good time as we are reviewing a number of the areas you discuss. 
See RG> below

"Lucinio Santos" <santosg@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx 11/30/01 10:37 AM Please respond to platform-ui-dev

To:        platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx         cc:                 Subject:        [platform-ui-dev] Proposal - Context and pulldown menus affecting resources in Navigator view

   4 -The Project pulldown is underutilized.  Currently contains a single
   item: Rebuild All. Some of the options exclusively presented in Context
   menus are quite important (Validate, Edit Deployment Descriptor, and
   Properties) and we should surface in the menu bar to make them more
   visible. Thus...
     The Project pulldown should include all the items currently present in
     context menu for a selected project.  If the resource selected is a
     File or (non-project) folder instead of a project, the Project
     pulldown would be populated with the items present in the context menu
     of the project to which the selected File or folder belongs to.


RG> As Nick mentioned, the Project menu should be renamed to Workbench. This would better reflect the scope of the actions we contribute to it.
I suspect most users do not realize there is a difference between Project>Build (builds all projects) and Build Project on the project context menu (builds only the selected project). However it is quite clear based on your comments and the comments of others in the newsgroup that users consider items in the Project menu to target the "current" project (the project that contains the current selection). It is quite possible that many plugins contribute actions to this menu which follow this logic. If we rename the menu from Project to Workspace it will "break" the semantics of the presentation of their actions. 

We could consider a Workbench menu in addition to Project. 
We would move our menu items currently under Project to Workbench (renaming them to Build Projects and Rebuild All Projects). In addition the Search menu item would move from Edit to Workbench and, as you suggested, Preferences would move from Window to Workbench. The JDT plugin would also move its Open Type item to Workbench.

The Project menu would then be used by us only for actions which target the Project of the current selection
Build
Rebuild All
Refresh from Local
etc.

One issue that is addressed nicely by having a targeted Project menu is the request to have project level actions available for resources contained in a project. For example, 
note how a .java file in the packages view has Build Project, Rebuild Project. These context menu items would no longer be needed.



        ... Except the following (context menu items) which would be placed
        under  other pulldowns (instead of in the Projects pulldown)
          - Clipboard items (Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete) would be placed in
          the Edit The following items currently present in context menu
          would be removed.  This items are already in the Edit pulldown

RG> I don't agree that these items should be removed from the context menu. It is very common to find these items on a context menu. We are planning to change the navigator to use Cut, Copy, Paste and a Clipboard metaphor to perform resource move and copy. Having to go up to the Edit menu to invoke these actions (assuming you do not want the use the keyboard) would be a pain.