4 ms·

Ironically, the same company showed how to perfectly execute a settings page in Visual Studio Code: It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a

by xg15 2y ago

Ironically, the same company showed how to perfectly execute a settings page in Visual Studio Code: It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a simple way to get help for each individual setting and an import/export functionality. But I suppose, it's from a different department...

minkles 2y ago
I'm not sure I could direct my mother around that...
Groxx 2y ago
It also requires manual JSON for many things, which are also not searchable, nor assistive-tool friendly because it relies on individually navigating through a tree of autocomplete rather than viewing them all on a single page... vscode's settings are easily my least favorite modern pattern, and I am flabbergasted that it's spreading to other tools. The "it's one big scrollable list with a sidebar nav" is great in some ways, but everything else about it is downright awful.
- troupo 2y ago
  I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" in their README's where X doesn't show up in the auto generated UI, and is called something else in JSON
  - tredre3 2y ago
    I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. There's a button top right to toggle. Ctrl+, then click the button. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" You're going to hate me but... You can "just set" workbench.settings.editor to "json" to always skip the ui!
    - Groxx 2y ago
      >You're going to hate me but... You can "just set" workbench.settings.editor to "json" to always skip the ui! This is a special category of hellish perfection. Thank you for this cursed yet useful information.
  - dmnmnm 2y ago
    > I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. Everything can be searched in VSCode, not just the settings page. Just do CTRL+SHIFT+P and type. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/w2sTSPA.png https://i.imgur.com/w2sTSPA.png Like tredre3 said there's also a button on the top right corner of settings, but I tend to prefer to start directly into json mode through the command palette. Being able to find any sort of action with the palette just by typing is hands down the best UI design I've experienced in software. It's not new, Unity had it in the older Ubuntu distributions, but it's unfortunately not seen often enough and Ubuntu lost it when they moved to Gnome. The palette search box also has the smart design of placing to the top functions you use the most through the palette, so if you open the json settings a few times it'll pop up at the top before you even finish typing the word "settings". After a while, your interactions with the palette make its UI feel very personalized to your needs.
- tstrimple 2y ago
  Far better than requiring registry changes. I’d love a sound-config.json compared to the hodgepodge you have to deal with today.
  - Groxx 2y ago
    Oh yeah, registry editing is unambiguously worse. But I've never used a sophisticated application that does most of its config via registry editing. It's for extreme edge cases only, where it's basically fine - it's a worse about:config, but it serves the same purpose, you only go in there when you already know what you need to do. vscode, in contrast, puts common things into hand-edited-json-only config. I don't think I've ever had a vscode project that didn't require json changes to work correctly. That's ridiculous.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Well it is a programmers tool not a bakers tool. So the level of crazy is not the same as if your roku expected you to edit json.
- xg15 2y ago
  I liked that part, but I'm fully with you that many UX decisions in VS code are completely inscrutable. Such as building an entire UI toolkit without any ability to show dialogs - and then requiring plugin authors to awkwardly work around this limitation by abusing the quick navigation and autocomplete functionalities - and if that doesn't work, have the users manually edit json files...
- Groxx 2y ago
  I should probably add: JSON(5, with comments) as a config storage format? And optional editing UI? Oh heck yes, that's perfectly reasonable. Requiring manual JSON editing, even with fancy autocomplete? Hell no. Turn that into a UI with the same info you show in the autocomplete. Obviously. WTF VSCode. WTF every tool that has copied this. This is not even slightly acceptable.
simoncion 2y ago
> It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a simple way to get help for each individual setting and an import/export functionality. IIRC, Eclipse had all of that (or maybe all that except for import/export?) five+ years prior to VS Code's first public release. And given that "Do a substring search through this huge-ass mess of options and switches and winnow down to the matches" is such a blindingly obvious thing to add in when you get so very many options in your configuration GUI, I'd be shocked if there weren't several things that predate Eclipse that did that, too.

by xg15 2y ago

minkles 2y ago

I'm not sure I could direct my mother around that...

Groxx 2y ago

It also requires manual JSON for many things, which are also not searchable, nor assistive-tool friendly because it relies on individually navigating through a tree of autocomplete rather than viewing them all on a single page... vscode's settings are easily my least favorite modern pattern, and I am flabbergasted that it's spreading to other tools. The "it's one big scrollable list with a sidebar nav" is great in some ways, but everything else about it is downright awful.

troupo 2y ago
I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" in their README's where X doesn't show up in the auto generated UI, and is called something else in JSON
- tredre3 2y ago
  I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. There's a button top right to toggle. Ctrl+, then click the button. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" You're going to hate me but... You can "just set" workbench.settings.editor to "json" to always skip the ui!
  - Groxx 2y ago
    >You're going to hate me but... You can "just set" workbench.settings.editor to "json" to always skip the ui! This is a special category of hellish perfection. Thank you for this cursed yet useful information.
- dmnmnm 2y ago
  > I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. Everything can be searched in VSCode, not just the settings page. Just do CTRL+SHIFT+P and type. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/w2sTSPA.png https://i.imgur.com/w2sTSPA.png Like tredre3 said there's also a button on the top right corner of settings, but I tend to prefer to start directly into json mode through the command palette. Being able to find any sort of action with the palette just by typing is hands down the best UI design I've experienced in software. It's not new, Unity had it in the older Ubuntu distributions, but it's unfortunately not seen often enough and Ubuntu lost it when they moved to Gnome. The palette search box also has the smart design of placing to the top functions you use the most through the palette, so if you open the json settings a few times it'll pop up at the top before you even finish typing the word "settings". After a while, your interactions with the palette make its UI feel very personalized to your needs.
tstrimple 2y ago
Far better than requiring registry changes. I’d love a sound-config.json compared to the hodgepodge you have to deal with today.
- Groxx 2y ago
  Oh yeah, registry editing is unambiguously worse. But I've never used a sophisticated application that does most of its config via registry editing. It's for extreme edge cases only, where it's basically fine - it's a worse about:config, but it serves the same purpose, you only go in there when you already know what you need to do. vscode, in contrast, puts common things into hand-edited-json-only config. I don't think I've ever had a vscode project that didn't require json changes to work correctly. That's ridiculous.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Well it is a programmers tool not a bakers tool. So the level of crazy is not the same as if your roku expected you to edit json.
xg15 2y ago
I liked that part, but I'm fully with you that many UX decisions in VS code are completely inscrutable. Such as building an entire UI toolkit without any ability to show dialogs - and then requiring plugin authors to awkwardly work around this limitation by abusing the quick navigation and autocomplete functionalities - and if that doesn't work, have the users manually edit json files...
Groxx 2y ago
I should probably add: JSON(5, with comments) as a config storage format? And optional editing UI? Oh heck yes, that's perfectly reasonable. Requiring manual JSON editing, even with fancy autocomplete? Hell no. Turn that into a UI with the same info you show in the autocomplete. Obviously. WTF VSCode. WTF every tool that has copied this. This is not even slightly acceptable.

simoncion 2y ago

> It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a simple way to get help for each individual setting and an import/export functionality. IIRC, Eclipse had all of that (or maybe all that except for import/export?) five+ years prior to VS Code's first public release. And given that "Do a substring search through this huge-ass mess of options and switches and winnow down to the matches" is such a blindingly obvious thing to add in when you get so very many options in your configuration GUI, I'd be shocked if there weren't several things that predate Eclipse that did that, too.