GUI request: make possible to disable panel hide/show animation

[Morganl]

...Because it is very sluggish on my comuter, disturbing the thinking and work flow.
(plus, i admit, it disturbs me also, that such small detial disturbs me )
(running in XP single CPU on Virtualbox on a dual 2GHz CPU laptop)

Besides from that and a couple ideas i will open in new threads,
I am satisfied with the PE6 for mainly the following reasons:

§ (Planned) native Linux application
§ #include
§ #macro
§ UTF8 encoding, Unix line ends

 

[Technical]

No, this is not possible. However if you auto- hide it, it will then not be visible and hence not paint.

 

[Morganl]

I have it auto-hide, but when i want to have a quick look at it it moves out slowly, and then back slowly.
I want it to just pop out full directly, then snap in.

 

[Technical]

We can look at the animation speed.

Or try dragging that panel off position so that it then floats, you can then click it up or down with the autohide button.

 

[Morganl]

Thanks, that is a workaround although not optimal: i can have PE6 maximised and all panel floating minimised on the otherwise wasted area at right parts of menu and ribbon, cklicking the pins toggles them down/up.
However it would be much better if the folded in from left as at left there is not much code that would be hidden (as most lines are short)

Going back to the problem, the workspace explorer took 2 seconds to fold put from left, and looked like it should need lubrication...
But after palyting around if it works faster from other edges it take only one second and goes smooth everywhere.

When the panels are floating they all unfold/fold quickly when the pin is cklicked.
I would appreciate if they would unfold/fold in the same quick way when they are docked and auto-hiding.
Not faster animation; turn off animation completely.
(with a checkmark in settings, so people who like bling-bling and have a faster computer are happy too)


Sidenote: Code explorer have funny minor issue: if i dock it at top, autohiding, when hovering the mouse on it, the first half second it displays its content from the very top frame of the whole PE6 covering menu and ribbon, before it corrects itself to display from below ribbon and down.

PE6.0.6.2 on XP Pro Swedish in Virtualbox on Mageia 4 Linux 64 bit KDE.

 

[Technical]

We think this is a VirtualBox issue, it doesn't take anywhere near 2 seconds normally. If you can see the 'painting' as described in your last sentence your system is running very slowly.

 

[Morganl]

You are right, it seem there is a compatibility issue with virtualbox and graphics. Copied whole XP box to my workstation, which is running slightly elder kernel and virtualbox, and do not see the problem there.

Regardless of that, some people like me do prefer snappines over animations, regardless of it opens in a second or not.

 

[Buzby]

... Regardless of that, some people like me do prefer snappiness over animations, ....

[RANT]

I'm running XP Pro SP3 on a Sony laptop, dual core 1.8GHz, 2Gb ram, which is plenty fast enough for everything I use, except PE6.



One of the benefits I was hoping to get in PE6 was faster simulation, even at the expense of no animation. ( See here http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?20188-Programming-Editor-Wishlist&p=192088&viewfull=1#post192088 )

I have had a long running discussion with support about the speed of PE6, and the result seems to be that it's not a problem in the bloated PE6, but that I need a better machine. Is there a published minimum spec for running PE6 ?.

One of the 'features' of PE5 was that it could run on just about any old £15 laptop that would otherwise be destined for the recycling bin, which made getting into PICAXE a very cheap option. Now it looks like I'm going to have to spend big money to work with my £2 chip.

[/RANT]

Buzby

 

[Morganl]

While i agree with Buzby, i realise i may not have been clear:

By "animation" in this thread i meant the visual sliding out of the panels (not animation of simulated program running)

 

[Buzby]

While i agree with Buzby, i realise i may not have been clear:

By "animation" in this thread i meant the visual sliding out of the panels (not animation of simulated program running)

I believe the two issues are linked. The slow program animation is due to the excessive overhead involved in running the user interface and fancy animations.

Buzby

 

[grim_reaper]

While I, like Morganl, agree with you Buzby, being a Windows developer I can tell you that a great deal of that 'bloat' is due to the Microsoft .NET Framework, and therefore in most cases there isn't a lot that support can do about it!

 

[Morganl]

.NET seem to add a lot net weight
I wonder what they will use for the Linux port.

 

[Buzby]

... being a Windows developer I can tell you that a great deal of that 'bloat' is due to the Microsoft .NET Framework, and therefore in most cases there isn't a lot that support can do about it!

I'm not a Windows developer, but I do know that WPF is geared towards needing a powerful GPU so it can offload lots of the work, but the 'old' interfaces ( like GDI+ ) are still there, even though MS is not promoting them.

The core of PE is little more than a text editor, an interface to the compiler, and a simulation engine. Even the PE user interface is mostly a text based display. All these functions should be able to run like lightning, even on a low spec PC.

I may sound like a Luddite, but as an engineer I want performance over prettiness. Looking in various places in the PE6 files, it seems a lot of PE6 is using code from Syncfusion, and the Syncfusion website shows the sort of target their code is for, and I can't find any examples that are similar to what PE needs.



I really do hope RevEd start to concentrate on performance, not presentation.

Buzby

 

[Morganl]

I see the same slowness on WinXP Pro running on real hardware, a Thinkpad T40.
So it is not a Virtualbox nor Linux host issue.
This computer have old GPU type so I guess modern Microsoft mojos can not utilise it.
Also here the code explorer panel moves slowly and a bit stuttering.
Very ridiculous since a lot of more seemingly advanced stuff runs nicely.

There is something that make code explorer, when showing variables, is slower than the other panels, that may be one separate issue to investigate for RevED.

But please skip the sliding, just make it appear in full immediately. (or at least make it configurable)