"Close Others" option in compiler IDE and drag and drop improvements.

09 Jun 2013

Not sure if these have been asked for before.

Could we have a "Close Others" option in the compiler editor? i.e. Much like Visual Studio: You right click on one particular tab in the editor, select the "Close Others" option from a drop-down menu and all the other tabs go away. Might seem like a small thing but when my programs get big and I'm tracking down errors in a lot of source files I end up with loads of files open and it is very tedious having to close them all down manually so I can concentrate on the few files that still have problems.

Secondly, when trying to port code from another compiler I often want to drag the source files from the original project (on my hard drive) into a program in the web based environment. It can be done, but it insists that you create a zip file and drag that instead. Then it always either creates a library or a new program. It would be great if you could just drag files straight from the desktop to a particular program folder and they would just appear there. [Edit: Actually, after playing around I have found that you can do this. You need to drop the file right on top of the program folder though, not anywhere else in the project]. You can also do this sort of thing from the import dialogue, but again it only lets you create new programs or libraries. Also, it would speed things up greatly if you could select more than one file at a time and either drag and drop them into a program or use the import option. At the moment if I want to get the code for a Widget class I need to select and import Widget.h and then repeat for Widget.cpp. I really want to select both Widget.h and Widget.cpp and import them in one go. I appreciate all this may be tough to do but I thought I would ask.

Thanks

-deleted-
10 Jun 2013

Hi Richard,

First, let me thank you for suggesting features to be added to the mbed Editor. The "Close Others" feature will be added in the next official release of the mbed Compiler, along with "Close File" and "Close All" context menu options. Additionally, we are planning to add tab group colors for the Editor tabs, so one can distinguish files between programs by looking at their colors.

It is possible to drag&drop multiple files in existing project, folder or library, as long as HTML5 compatible browser is used. The Internet Explorer browser family has a broken HTML5 support in quirks mode, thus it's not possible to use it for that purpose, though any other browser would do - Chrome, Firefox and even Opera. Valid drop areas are the navigation tree items and the Browse list (file list) as shown in this short video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya1MDNmZbQI.

Hope this helps.

Once again thanks for the suggestions and if you have any other ideas please don't hesitate to share them with us!

Cheers,
Mihail