Forum Discussion

aleppke's avatar
aleppke
New Contributor
14 years ago

Eclipse plug-in feature suggestions

First off, I have to say I'm loving the Eclipse plug-in. It makes things a lot easier when you don't have to leave the IDE to do a review. That said, my biggest complaint is that it's not obvious what's happening in conversations unless you have the review tab active. Currently, the only indication that something new has happened is in the Action Items window when the first new comment is added. I may or may not have that window visible if I'm working on something else. A toaster notification and/or flashing tab/action item would be nice to grab my attention and let me know something has happened in the review.



On a related note, the Conversations window is empty unless a review or review file is the active tab. While I understand that it needs some context in order to know which conversations to show, it would be nice if it had some kind of overview of all conversations/reviews when it doesn't have that context. Just something like a list of files in the review and a count of how many comments and defects are in each one and how many of those are unread. Clicking on a file here would open it up.



The general idea here is that while the review is in progress, I'm going to be working on something else and my attention will be on that. I don't want to have to keep checking back on the review unless something has happened. Since Code Collaborator is designed to function as a chat or IM for reviews, it should be as attention-grabbing as a chat or IM client.



Anybody else have thoughts on this?
  • rpaterson's avatar
    rpaterson
    SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
    Agreed it would be nice to make the Action Items tab somehow show you when your Action Items have changed.  I'm not sure how to make the icon change/animate - it's specified in a static xml file.  However I noticed the other day that the JUnit View does this, so it must be possible.



    You're not the first person to ask for the Conversations View to show something when there is no Review Editor or Compare Editor in focus, but there isn't really clear agreement on what it should be.