I love the look. Did you do a new syntax highlighting scheme as well? What I have working in my new IDE so far is functional and fast, but ugly as sin. I could really use some help on the visuals side.
If you are interested I'm doing a private alpha release this weekend. Send me an email at joshua@marinacci.org if you want in. Thanks!
- Josh
hilukasz:
[quote author=Josh Marinacci link=topic=120882.msg910281#msg910281 date=1346435084]
I love that there are professional quality alternative IDEs but that is no reason to let the main Arduino developer tool atrophy. We are talking about the first thing that a new user experiences. It should be as good as possible.I suggest a two phased approach. First, implement a bunch of small fixes and improvements that increase usability without fundamentally adding anything new. Things like:
- Smooth fonts
- Resize fonts with a shortcut (cmd+ and cmd- usually)
- Match native key bindings. Right now certain keybindings are available in native apps that aren't there in the IDE. Ctrl-A for start of line, for example. (on Mac)
- Serial port names. When the IDE asks you for the serial port of your Arduino it gives you a list of names that contain no useful information. There must be some way to fix this. Perhaps if there is only one serial port attached we don't even ask you, just assume the default.
- Add a "Window" menu showing the currently open windows
- line numbers in the gutter
- a selection of nice alternative color themes
- make the toolbar look nicer (new colors? gradients?)
- switch to nicer icons from the Noun project.
- make the serial port dock-able with the main window
- support fullscreen mode on OSes that support such a concept.
The second phase would tackle deeper issues
- syntax highlighting and code completion
- a sidebar with inline help for the language reference
- a sidebar with docs on each library you have imported into your project
- a way to discover and add new libraries from within your IDE. Perhaps a repo of common arduino libs?
thoughts?
- Josh
Hey Josh,
I'm actually a UI designer who got into creative coding and inevitably into hardware stuff, so the IDE kind of drove me crazy after being used to a lot of designer designed UIs. I actually have dug around on the IDE files and managed to hack into a few things. I did a writeup today here: http://hellowoo.com/arduino/dark-ui-theme-syntax-highlighting/ since it was generating some interest and also have a thread going here: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,120268.0.html feel free to add to it or poke the developers for some suggestions 
maybe they will implement some of the changes.
I have managed to do a few things like: smooth fonts, change UI colors and Icons, change the syntax highlighting. It would be nice to have a tool writing in something like processing that would allow to write to the file I edited so edits could be seen easier too. Still a lot to be desired, but its a start.
As a side note, read up on your arduino IDE project, and if you need design, hit me up. I would love to help.
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