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> It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: [...] a Minimap Do people actually find the Minimap useful for coding? If so, how? And wh

by vosper 6y ago

> It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: [...] a Minimap Do people actually find the Minimap useful for coding? If so, how? And why is it better/different than just a scrollbar, or searching? I've always thought of Minimaps as a thing that seems like it should be adding something to the interface, but actually isn't at all. Seems like pointless eye-candy, to me. What am I missing?

kevsim 6y ago
I scan it for different colors in VS Code quite often. Oops, something red down there. Or quick scan to see where the various colored things that represent git diffs are (red for deleted, green for new, blue for changed). But as you said, can get the same in the scroll bar.
Brendinooo 6y ago
I use my minimap sometimes. Some people are just more visual. Like, if I have a big file that has a class somewhere, and I know I took a bunch of notes on it, I can scan the minimap for the big block of green comment text, and click that section to jump directly to it. Regardless, I'm not really short on horizontal space in a world where monitors are huge and 80-character lines are still the norm, so it costs little to keep it there.
- dmit 6y ago
  This is it. In my head the code file I'm working on is closer to a (geographic) map than to a Table of Contents in a book. There are large islands and small ones, some of the small ones form archipelagos (like grouped up constant definitions at the top). The minimap is good at conveying the "shape" and relative size of these code sections at a glance.
tleb_ 6y ago
I feel the same about minimaps. In the same extract they list "editor overscroll"; the feature set must be limited to list that on the landing page. > It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: smart autocomplete, multiple cursors, a Minimap, editor overscroll, tag pairs and brackets, and way, way more.
- twic 6y ago
  What even is editor overscroll?
  - panopticon 6y ago
    Being able to scroll beyond the last line, so you can place the last line at the top of your viewport if you wished.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
It's refreshing to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't like those. As stupid as I know this is, the Minimap actually kept me from trying Sublime Text initially, because it seemed like that was the big feature it was pushing in its earliest days. :)
nultxt 6y ago
I love my minimap, not because it's useful to me at all, but because it looks so freakin COOL
RandallBrown 6y ago
Back in my Windows development days I used to LOVE Rock Scroll. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingRockScroll.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingRockScroll.aspx It made the scrollbar a literal screenshot of the code.
mey 6y ago
I only use it to jump to sections that are modified from source control, flagged as FIXME/etc or have a compile/lint issue. Having the graphical representation of code density isn't helpful to me normally.
osxman 6y ago
Minimap => Waist of valuable screen space, even on my 42 inch 4K monitor...

by vosper 6y ago

kevsim 6y ago

I scan it for different colors in VS Code quite often. Oops, something red down there. Or quick scan to see where the various colored things that represent git diffs are (red for deleted, green for new, blue for changed). But as you said, can get the same in the scroll bar.

Brendinooo 6y ago

I use my minimap sometimes. Some people are just more visual. Like, if I have a big file that has a class somewhere, and I know I took a bunch of notes on it, I can scan the minimap for the big block of green comment text, and click that section to jump directly to it. Regardless, I'm not really short on horizontal space in a world where monitors are huge and 80-character lines are still the norm, so it costs little to keep it there.

dmit 6y ago
This is it. In my head the code file I'm working on is closer to a (geographic) map than to a Table of Contents in a book. There are large islands and small ones, some of the small ones form archipelagos (like grouped up constant definitions at the top). The minimap is good at conveying the "shape" and relative size of these code sections at a glance.

tleb_ 6y ago

I feel the same about minimaps. In the same extract they list "editor overscroll"; the feature set must be limited to list that on the landing page. > It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: smart autocomplete, multiple cursors, a Minimap, editor overscroll, tag pairs and brackets, and way, way more.

twic 6y ago
What even is editor overscroll?
- panopticon 6y ago
  Being able to scroll beyond the last line, so you can place the last line at the top of your viewport if you wished.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago

It's refreshing to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't like those. As stupid as I know this is, the Minimap actually kept me from trying Sublime Text initially, because it seemed like that was the big feature it was pushing in its earliest days. :)

nultxt 6y ago

I love my minimap, not because it's useful to me at all, but because it looks so freakin COOL

RandallBrown 6y ago

Back in my Windows development days I used to LOVE Rock Scroll. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingRockScroll.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingRockScroll.aspx It made the scrollbar a literal screenshot of the code.

mey 6y ago

I only use it to jump to sections that are modified from source control, flagged as FIXME/etc or have a compile/lint issue. Having the graphical representation of code density isn't helpful to me normally.

osxman 6y ago

Minimap => Waist of valuable screen space, even on my 42 inch 4K monitor...