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hans: I've attached my original multimedia (for me) response to the Action editor design. Not to put too fine point on it, but: the UE aspect of this that I was most interested in a reaction to was capping the entire dialog with a summary of what bulk of the properties actually mean. In other words, show me something like this, at the top of the dialog (in the power position):

When jButton1 is pressed: call mediaPlayer.Main.doPlay

If we can't bear to this statement directly manipulable, then I'd settle for a read-only title. Making it directly manipulable by assembling standard GUI components (notably combo boxes) doesn't work because the component decoration interferes with the statement's readability. There was some desultory follow up on that point on this alias late last year. I think this is rather important because this kind of thing isn't going to immediately apparent to novices. I want this stuff to be easier for newbies.

Here is a mockup of what it would look like. The bold parts would change as the user changes settings in the dialog.

list of ways to access the action property editor

• right click on a component which supports actions and select the 'edit action' menu item
• select a component then click the '...' button next to the action property in the property sheet
• in the global action list, double click an action
• in the global action list, select the action then click the 'edit' button.

Attachments