Document Windows with Preview behaviors like in Visual Studio 2012

Hi Clint,

Sorry but we don't have that feature available in our product at this time.  I will write down the suggestion.  What sort of API (the more detailed, the better) would you like to see in relation to that?

I see.

Well our scenario is, we have a treeview of objects. What we want is when we single-click on an object, it will show the details of the object in the Workspace as a DocumentWindow but as a preview only. Its Header is on the right. If I single-click on other objects, that preview document windows's content will be updated to the details of the selected object.

When we double-click, we want the details to show still on the workspace as a new DocumentWindow. This time the Header is on the left as it not in preview mode.

Try out Visual Studio 2012 and play around with single and double clicks for .cs files.

If you can think of a workaround, that would be great!

Regards,

Clint

Hi Clint,

Thanks for writing, we have played with that feature a bit.  I'm not sure of the best way to offer it via our API though. 

There are some odd scenarios that come up such as if you drag to have two tabbed MDI containers, you can potentially have two "previews" open since the preview seems to be per container, like in these VS steps:

1. Open two normal documents.
2. Drag one to a new tabbed MDI container.
3. Preview something in the Solution Explorer.
4. Click on the document in the other MDI container.
5. Preview something else in the Solution Explorer.
6. You now have a preview document in each each MDI container.

This means that there isn't a single "preview" document for the entire MDI.  There can potentially be multiple previews open, which honestly feels a little awkward and poorly designed to me.  Having multiple previews means the API needs to be far more complicated than just having a single one that is somehow accessible via the DockSite.  What is the best approach here (single preview in MDI or allow per container like VS) and how to we flag a document window as a "preview" in our API?

Another question is whether the preview that opens is a full fledged document?  It seems like it has to be and that if the user types into it, some flag for whether the document is a preview switches to false and the tab moves into the left side.  Any edits made to the document text remain so its doubtful that a new visual or document has been created there to accomplish the "unpreview" move.

I'm sure there are other questions but those are big ones for starters.

Thanks for the information above. It surely adds something for us to consider in terms of user experience.

Regards,

Clint

Btw, would you be able to add this feature in future versions? Some of our apps are following the Visual Studio 2012. We have to test the efficiency of this feature.

Hi Clint,

Possibly, but we'd like to get additional feedback from you and others on the design questions we posed above.  We'd probably have additional implementation questions in the future as well.

Hi Actipro Support,

I am also interested in the Preview Tab functionality - has anything happened to move you to add support for this feature?

Herschel

Hello, thanks for the vote on this feature.  We are considering doing a big overhaul of our Docking/MDI product in the future to add major new features.  This is something we will consider.

I want to be able to display a tab at the far right in a tabbed control (similar to default VS preview, as the original poster wanted). Has anything on those requests moved beyond the 'being considered' phase?

Ignoring the other aspects of the original poster's request, is there any way to get a tab to be positioned at the far right rather than the default tab layout?

Hi Thomas,

Yes we have started working on a Docking/MDI rewrite while attempting to retain the same public API in general.  One core piece that is completed is a new advanced TabControl that supports things like preview tabs.  It will be a primary UI piece used in tabbed MDI and tool window containers.  We have that advanced TabControl done and have moved onto more of the main docking functionality.  The new features won't likely be complete for several months yet but we will blog about them as we get further along.  There's a lot of nice new features in the works for Docking/MDI with this rewrite.

There isn't really a way to get a tab positioned on the right with the current Docking/MDI version unless you alter the panel used to lay out the tabbed MDI.  It wouldn't be easy to do.  Our rewrite will make this sort of thing pretty effortless so you probably want to wait for it.