Method Explorer question?

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Method Explorer question?

TimM-3
I am liking the MethodExplorer - but still beginning to understand the
subtleties of it.

e.g. If you find references to something (and say you get back 10 methods)
work down the first list and find what you're really looking for (say the
5th one), and then find reference to a new method mentioned in it- I didn't
at first realise that to look back at the first method (the 5th one) - using
the Back buton preserves the selection to that 5th method (where'as clicking
on the hierarchy list - will select the first item).

Thats really nice! I think that also pressing "Backspace" is the keyboard
equivalent of pressing that button? (it seems to do this which is greate) -
however its not indicated in any of the menus (maybe Shift-F1 help should
mention it).  I also wonder if there is a keyboard equivalent for going
forward again (Shift-Backspace?). They keyboard is useful to quickly run
through the chain of message sends again.

On another note - when clicking on the down button of the forward button
(thats a mouthfull - but the little down triangle) - do you ever get more
than one entry in the menu? If I do several "Definitions of" from a single
starting point, I was expecting to see them in that list, but I seem to just
get the last one?

In playing with this - it struck me that a really nice adition to this
metaphor would be a quick way to easily navigate the "Definitions of" inside
the current method without having to right click on the method, select
Definitions of, then select one of the defintions to navigate forward (I
hate right clicking - especially two levels). I wondered if that Forward
dropdown might be a good place to just show you those potential navigations
(after a separator) as drilling down is quite a common scenario. Maybe this
would be too complicated - but there is a germ of an idea there
(alternatively doing the eclipse/idea method hyperlink trick is neat - but
thats huge work I figure).

Maybe I could add this onto the toolbar as "drilldown" icons myself (sounds
like an interesting challenge to play with on the train).

Tim


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Re: Method Explorer question?

TimM-3
> e.g. If you find references to something (and say you get back 10 methods)
> work down the first list and find what you're really looking for (say the
> 5th one), and then find reference to a new method mentioned in it- I
> didn't at first realise that to look back at the first method (the 5th
> one) - using the Back buton preserves the selection to that 5th method
> (where'as clicking on the hierarchy list - will select the first item).


Actually - I keep finding that its so automatice to click on the LH list -
and so lose my selection. A nice to have would be that it restores that
selection (although this could just be me... I need to use those arrows...)


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Re: Method Explorer question?

Blair McGlashan
In reply to this post by TimM-3
"TimM" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
>I am liking the MethodExplorer - but still beginning to understand the
>subtleties of it.
> ....
> In playing with this - it struck me that a really nice adition to this
> metaphor would be a quick way to easily navigate the "Definitions of"
> inside the current method without having to right click on the method,
> select Definitions of, then select one of the defintions to navigate
> forward (I hate right clicking - especially two levels). ...

Click over the message in the source pane that you are interested in
following. Then press either F12 or Shift+F12 to go to the definitions or
references respectively. These accelerators will intelligently browse the
right thing, depending on whether you click over a message send, class name,
etc.

Regards

Blair