On Wed 02 Oct 2013 12:33:40 PM PDT, Erik Rose wrote: > What features do you most use in MXR and DXR? > > Over in the recently renamed Web Engineering group, we're working hard to > retire MXR. It hasn't been maintained for a long time, and there's a lot of > duplication between it and DXR, which rests upon a more modern foundation and > has been developing like crazy. However, there are some holes we need to fill > before we can expect you to make a Big Switch. An obvious one is indexing > more trees: comm-central, aurora, etc. And we certainly have some bothersome > UI bugs to squash. But I'd like to hear from you, the actual users, so it's > not just me and Taras guessing at priorities. > > What keeps you off DXR? (What are the MXR things you use constantly? Or the > things which are seldom-used but vital?) > > If you're already using DXR as part of your workflow, what could it do to > make your work more fun?
Overall, I really like dxr. Especially the speed. But the incremental results, while cool, are done in a way that makes me feel like I'm not in control. I'm not sure when it's still thinking. It all feels a little too magic. But anyway, on to some specific items. Just one or two, ok?: * The search boxes don't work for setting up keyword searches. Er... wait, the main box actually just worked for that for the first time! It used to be missing the tree name, I guess? But it's still problematic to use any of the advanced search boxes. * Related bug: 1. Clear out all the advanced search choices 2. Enter "Foo" into the "function-ref" box 3. Right-click on the "function" box, add a keyword search (say it's 'dxr1') 4. Ctrl-L, enter "dxr1 Bar" Result: function-ref box gets filled with "Foo?substring-search=" Desired result: dxr1 is a valid keyword search for either "function:Bar" or "function:Bar function-ref:Foo". I don't really care which. * Related bug 2: 1. Enter any random search at the main page to get to the results page. 2. Clear out all fields in the advanced search box 3. Add a keyword search for the "function" box Result: the keyword search remembers the original search, the one that you manually cleared out. * I find the Advanced Search box confusing. I'm not sure whether it's ORing or ANDing my results. (I mean, it's pretty easy to figure out if you search for known stuff.) At the very least, I would like a stronger visual indicator of which fields are being used (nonempty). The auto-updating main search bar definitely helps with this, but it's not enough for simpletons like me. Having a "Clear All" or "Reset" button would help too. * UI jumps around a lot while it's populating the incremental results. Moves the incremental functionality from "cool" to "annoying". * The lag in the incremental results view when I switch searches feels bad. eg I have some set of results open, and I wipe out my search and replace it with a new one. For some amount of time, I see the old results, with no progress indicator telling me that they're out of date and it's refreshing. In general, it needs a better activity indicator, even when refining existing results. * Tooltips on the advanced search options! I totally have to guess what "function" vs "function-ref" means. Is "function" any occurrence, just declarations, just definitions, or ? "Function *reference*" makes me think of a C++ &reference, too. I don't know what the "warning" search does, since its example returns no results. Do the advanced search criteria icons show up anywhere else in the UI? Right now, they seem like visual noise, but if they appeared alongside something else (results?), I might get to like them. * I don' t see a way to go from the results screen to the source code browsing, other than clicking on the icon to get back to the "main" screen and following the link there. Ok, maybe this is only a problem because I don't see any point in the main screen. It goes away quickly and it's not obvious how to get back to it, so why does it even exist? * I don't know what makes the Advanced Search box and Navigation boxes appear or disappear, nor how to get them back when they're not there. The thing seems to have a mind of its own -- I just switched back to it from writing this message, and it somehow had mozilla-central/AUTHORS selected. Is there some weird onBlur behavior? Eh, maybe I clicked something without meaning to. Oh! The advanced search box appears when you press enter. But there's no visible reason to ever have to press enter, so it's easy to miss. * The regexp field not only requires the /slanted brackets/, but it ignores the 1st and last characters no matter what they are. (I entered "fprintf", and it showed me matches for "print".) * It's been said, but the source links should have a revision in them so they're stable. I don't know how to reconcile that with having them point to dxr, since presumably dxr indexes only one version. * Does dxr have access to other static information? Eg, can I see a list of callers/callees of a function? * The search box icon (a dinosaur in a magnifying glass) makes it look like you're looking through the wrong end of binoculars -- surely it's making the dinosaur *smaller*, not bigger, given its size? :-) (Please ignore this comment.) _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
