The Options Dialog (Part 1)
May
27
Written by:
Thursday, May 27, 2010 10:03:51 PM
Last couple of weeks were really slow. Had lot’s of troubles getting infrastructure stuff up and running. Had to get rid of my Exchange server, needed to switch to Team Foundation Server because I’m really sick of Subversion and the latest challenge was to get the Royal TS 2.0 to compile against .NET 4.0. Let me tell you, it’s not that easy as you might think!
Anyhow, I’m back on track and I think I will be able to finish the Options dialog by the end of the upcoming weekend.
2 Sections of the Options dialog are done already:
The “General” Section:
”Application Start” will allow you to set one of three options which are pretty self explanatory:
- Do not open any documents
- Open documents from last session
- Open a selection of documents (see screenshot)
The option “Application Close” moved from the main window’s “Tools” menu to the options dialog and will prompt for confirmation before you close the application if any connection is still active.
“Theme” works pretty much the same way as before except for one small detail: changing the selection will “preview” how the theme will look like by temporarily change the theme.
Royal TS 2.0 will have some informational popup-banners which you can hide and some prompts with a checkbox option “Do not show this again”.“Reset Warnings and Messages” will reset all those dialogs and popup-banners which may annoy you.
The “Encryption” Section:
This section is exactly the same UI element you can find to encrypt and password-protect your documents. Because Royal TS 2 will allow you to store credentials in your application settings, this makes sense. The general idea is, that you do not have any credentials defined in your documents – you still can, but you should define your credentials in your application settings and just reference them in your documents. This way you do not really have to encrypt your document (again, you still can if you need to). It makes document sharing much easier. I will post a detailed blog post in a couple of weeks how document sharing and referencing credentials will work.
One important question, I would love to get your feedback:
I’m considering to reduce the priority or maybe drop one feature present in Royal TS 1.x for the first Royal TS 2.0 release: “Minimize to Systray”. It seems that Windows 7 changed the game a bit and the “Show Desktop” function and the new task bar integration seems to cause weird behavior. I originally planned to keep at least every Royal TS 1.x feature in the 2.0 release but this could delay the release date a bit and I was wondering how important that feature might be for you. Please leave a comment or drop me an email…
9 comment(s) so far...
Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
Drop the feature permanently and stick to Win7's taskbar and jump lists. Those are much more useful than having another place to hide an icon. If someone really digs the systray it's time for them to rethink its usage when the new taskbar combines icons by default.
By Joe on
Friday, June 11, 2010 11:35:57 AM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
My opinion would be to let it go. Personally, I want very few things in the system tray and this isn't one of them. I never use the feature so I wouldn't miss it.
By John on
Friday, June 04, 2010 1:28:17 PM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
Don't really use that function.
So wouldn't miss it if you left it out.
But, than again, it's just the question how many users read the blog and care to reply...
By Farhaz on
Friday, June 11, 2010 11:37:05 AM
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Looks really good
Personally, I also like the new Windows 7 and Office 2010 themes of DevExpress.com XtraBars for Windows Forms.
By Uwe on
Friday, June 11, 2010 11:37:24 AM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
Probably drop it just to release the product and then work on it later. I would use the system tray feature but it is not critical.
By Dan on
Friday, June 11, 2010 11:37:41 AM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
I agree with John. RoyalTS is always open in my case so I never used it anyway. :)
By Marco on
Friday, June 11, 2010 11:37:54 AM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
Hi Stefan,
I vote for droping it. it is not big deal for who ever uses RoyalTS.
By fmustafa_ on
Thursday, June 17, 2010 5:56:30 PM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
I vote to keep it. I use that feature every day and hate having to many things open on my taskbar. I consider RoyalTS to be one of my core daily use apps therefore is deserves to be minimized to my System Tray.
By Brett on
Monday, June 21, 2010 1:33:18 PM
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Re: The Options Dialog (Part 1)
Thanks for your vote, Brett. My intention is not to completely drop it. I just want to keep it out for the firtst iteration because of the tight schedule. Could you live with a situation where this feature will be shipped with 2.1 or so?
By Stefan Koell on
Monday, June 21, 2010 1:34:42 PM
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