Sublime Forum

User interface suggestions

#1

I put together an interactive UI mock-up comprising some ideas for simplifying/updating the overall ST user interface:

hansifer.github.io/sublimeTextUIProposal/

Feedback welcome.

Cheers,
Hans

0 Likes

#2

I know that a picture says more than a thousand words, but could you please add a few words as well to elaborate on what you mean?

I understand the path bar, and that is something Iā€™d like to see as well. The side bar, status bar, and mini map looks just like the existing ones, or am I missing something? Putting the menu bar inside the window breaks the UI guidelines for all platforms so I donā€™t agree with that.

0 Likes

#3

I see what you mean. Iā€™ll add more info. In the meantime, can you provide references to the ā€œUI guidelines for all platformsā€ that youā€™re referring to?

0 Likes

#4

The obvious difference is moving the tabs to the top, but overall I was trying to come up with something visually simpler and more cohesive that makes better use of real-estate, mostly by adjusting the placement and visual parity of the different UI areas and eliminating as many non-practical visual elements as possible. Currently (in Windows at least), the status bar, menu bar, side bar, title bar, and tabs/content areas each have a distinct style.

The UI is already very good and much better than any other editor/IDE Iā€™ve seen, but it could be even better with a few relatively subtle visual adjustments that have a big impact on UX IMO. Granted, these adjustments do not necessarily translate into a correspondingly subtle implementation effort, so even if there WERE an interest from ST to improve the applicationā€™s UX, Iā€™m not pinning my hopes on that happening.

0 Likes

#5

I personally like the Side Bar but Iā€™m not a big fan of the menu because Ubuntu and Mac have this build in in the Global Menu bar.
But for operating systems like Windows this could be a nice feature.
And if you want the file path you can just right click the file and copy it so I do not see a need for that.

But other than it is a nice new UI look :smile:.

0 Likes

#6

Agreed. I failed to mention that my intention is not to force a window-level menu bar in OSā€™s that make use of a global menu bar. In those cases, that area could be used for other things (eg, the file path) or just permanently hidden.

0 Likes

#7

Ok than I completely like this idea for the UI :smile:.
I hope jps will see this and take inspiration of this :wink:.

0 Likes

#8

Can you please add a side pannel with all snippets, so I can just click on them to insert? Iā€™m using Komodo Edit now just because of this feature, but itā€™s very glitchy and I would definitely switch to Sublime Text if you add this feature too. It looks like this in Komodo:

0 Likes

#9

Donā€™t really see the need for a snippets sidebar. You can easily and quickly add snippets into your documents using the Command Palette (Shift+Command+P) and due to fussy searching you can find the snippet you want rather fast, as opposed to digging for them through folders on a sidebar.

With regards to the user interface, I would like to see Sublime implement the tabs in the same way that Chrome does it, I think it would make Sublime look sleeker and the custom themes would also be able to encompass the whole UI, like in Chrome.

0 Likes

#10

I like the tabs, but I donā€™t like that the sidebar inherits the tint colour.

0 Likes

#11

You call this fast?? With opened sidebar I can just doubleclick on snippet, I donā€™t have to type anything. And I can also select some text, click on snippet and selected text will jump inside of snippet text on set position. This is how snippets should be - easy to use and fast to reach.

0 Likes

#12

Absolutely. Say you named your snippet ā€œanalyticsā€ (for the Google Analytics code), just you hit shift+command+p, type ā€œsni anaā€ press enter and boom, you have your snippet with the cursor placed whenever you defined inside your snippet code. Thanks to fuzzy searching you donā€™t need to type the whole name, usually the first three letters are enough.

With this method, I donā€™t have to reach for the mouse, have a sidebar open taking up screen real state, look for the desired item in a list (even scrolling if necessary) and double clicking it. Using the command palette is a faster and less complex process overall.

0 Likes