Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

re: Jay Bazuzi discusses the 'Rename' Refactoring in some detail...

Code/Tea/Etc... — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 01:53:00 GMT

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Sean Timm — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:48:00 GMT

Jay,
I just had one small comment to make regarding your side note "Users seem mildly annoyed by smart tags in Office usability studies."

I, too, have occasionally found myself annoyed at the smart tag usability in Office. On the other hand, JetBrain's IntelliJ IDEA (http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/index.html) uses smart tag-like functionality (they call them "intention actions"), and I find them *incredibly* useful, intuitive, and relevant. I've never had more pleasure using an IDE than I did with IDEA where it seems like every day I would discover something new with it, and it would perform the functionality *exactly* how I wanted it to.

Code editing is entirely different than general office document work, and I find smart tags far more useful in the former. I was honestly surprised to hear that Office usability studies would impact the design of a code editor in this regard. I sincerely hope this decision is revisited...

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

jaybaz [MS] — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:06:00 GMT

Very interesting, Sean. I'll bring it up with the team.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Keith Nicholas — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:19:00 GMT

small indvidual refactorings is the way to go...the less UI you need the better. The ideal is no UI at all (not that its achievable). This way you can refactor with a keystroke and not get held up by selecting many options for the refactoring. This is also a lot more decoupled!

Keith

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Nicholas Allen — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:46:00 GMT

Aha! I was very confused by Promote Local. Now I understand. It's clever, but I wouldn't have figured out how to use this in the product unless you made this blog entry into a tooltip. I take it that putting IntelliSense into a text field would be very hard?

I have no problems with cutting ret<->out. I'm not sure if I've ever done that.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Jerry Pisk — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:50:00 GMT

Can you use a function call in place of an out parameter? I don't think you can, so you don't have to worry about that specific case since you shouldn't try to refactor invalid code...

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Jerry Pisk — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:52:00 GMT

Oops, I should pay more attention to what I'm reading... Disregard my previous post :)

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

jaybaz [MS] — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 02:30:00 GMT

Jerry: it only took you 2 minutes to discover your error; you beat my average, for sure!

Nicholas: Sounds like we need to make this clearer. Will blog...

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Sean Chase — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 03:25:00 GMT

Another great blog entry. I'm with Nicholas on the "how" not being clear until now - and it is always interesting to hear the "why" as well.

[Will these Refactorings, as written, suit your needs?]

Yes, I am loving refactoring in Beta 1

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Stuart — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:55:00 GMT

I don't know if this is supported in addition to what you've described, but...

I'm normally a VS.NET user and like it a lot - it was the first IDE that ever made me feel more productive than using a text editor (incidentally, any chance of VIM keybindings? ;) ) I recently had to use Eclipse for a project and was underwhelmed, mainly the UI was unresponsive and a fast UI is IMHO absolutely critical for stuff like intellisense. If I can type in the full name of the method by the time it's gotten around to popping up, why bother?

However, I did have one "holy crap, that's cool" moment while using Eclipse. I'd written code like this (note that other than naming conventions, this could just as easily be C# code):

public static void main(String[] args) {
myFunc();
}
private void myFunc() {
// do some stuff
}

Not only did Eclipse flag the call to myFunc as an error - *immediately*, not just when I compiled the project - but it also offered a (clumsy) equivalent to Whidbey's smart tags, offering the option "make myFunc() static."

For me, this kind of thing is the ideal refactoring UI is to notice that I'm actually doing it already and offer me the option of automating the process. Sort of like a less intrusive version of "it looks like you're writing a letter".

If I go to the declaration of a method and add a parameter, it would be great if the IDE would offer me the choice of modifying all call sites of that method to match the new signature. Even better would be if I add a call to a method with a signature that doesn't exist, allowing me to either add a new overload stub for that method OR modify an existing overload to add/remove the necessary parameters (in which case, also help me modify the other call sites accordingly).

I've noticed that Whidbey C# Express already has some of this in the form of 'rename' - if you rename a class or namespace it offers the option to rename it across the board. So maybe you already have all this - I haven't had enough time to test all the things I'd like to, and this is one of them. But if you don't have it, consider this a request ;)

Get Rid Of The Dialog Boxes, Please

Bruce Williams [MSFT] — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:56:00 GMT

For parameter reordering or deletion, I don’t see why you need a dialog box at all – it unnecessarily takes you away from the code. You should be able to grab a parameter’s smart tag, and drag it to another position in the parameter list. All matching call sites should change to match. No dialogs – if I did something bad, give me a red squiggle. It would work like column headers in Outlook – drag them around or throw them away with the mouse.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

b.gr — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:00:00 GMT

I agree with Sean Timm: smart tags (ST) are the IntelliSense of context menus (or at least a thing between) so it does make sense to provide ST in a code editor.

On the topic of this entry: now that I know about all this build-in refactoring fun I want it for C++ too :)

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

David A. Mellis — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:39:00 GMT

I don't think the smart tags would be as bad if they didn't require so many actions to activate. To use them, I have to click on a function name (say), move the mouse, hover over the function name, hover over the icon, click on the arrow, and then click on the menu item. Seems a bit much.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Bruce Williams [MSFT] — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:26:00 GMT

What David said - it seems like smart-tags could be combined in interesting ways with mouse-gestures. Grab the smart tag and move the parameter around. Grab the smart tag and move the local variable to a parameter. Grab the smart tag and throw the parameter away. Grab the smart tag...

Larkware

TrackBack — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:10:00 GMT

Larkware

avoid dialog boxes while refactoring

TrackBack — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:10:00 GMT

avoid dialog boxes while refactoring

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Kevin Pilch-Bisson — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 03:23:00 GMT

David,

You can use Ctrl+. (or shift+alt+F10 which also works in Office) to bring up the menu, any time you are on an identifier with a smart tag.

Saves a lot of using the mouse.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Cyrus Najmabadi — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:18:00 GMT

David: Smart tags can be activated by the keyboard as well.

FOr example, For generate method stub you can just type:

FooBar(1, 2, 3);<ctrl-dot><enter>

The ctrl-dot activates the smart tag, and the enter triggers the action.

Would that help?

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

David A. Mellis — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:21:00 GMT

Kevin and Cyrus: thanks, that does help. But it's no excuse for requiring such a convoluted sequence to invoke the smart tag with the mouse. Especially because discoverability is central to smart tags, and that favors the more intuitive mouse interface.

Also, why doesn't ctrl+. highlight the first item in the menu?

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Philip Rieck — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:53:00 GMT

Exactly what David says. Everywhere in windows, right-clicking the mouse on something brings up a "context menu".... Context being the key word -- the menu depends on *what* you right-clicked on.

So why not put the "smart tags" in the context menu if you click on the item? For example, in whidbey if you declare a class as implementing an interface, the interface name has a smart tag. To do the useful "implement implicitly" action after I've stubbed out my class I have to click on the name, hover over the tag, click on the icon, choose a menu item. ack. can't I use the context menu? as far as always adding the items, why not varying the items in the context menu based on the (gasp) context the menu was brought up in?

Here's a compromise: in the context menu of the code editor, add a "smart tag" sub menu, normally disabled. For items that have smarts on them, the smart tag provides the items under that submenu. Heck, just ask the smart tag to draw itself as if it were a submenu. Anything.

Then I can just right-click, and choose "smart tag | implement implicitly" from the context menu. Lots of annoying steps removed.

It would allow me to use the smart tag either as described above, through the keyboard (ctrl+.), or through just two clicks and a hover. This would make the code editor smart tags much, MUCH more usable (to me and the few people over here I "tested" the idea on). Any chances on that?

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

Bruce Williams [MSFT] — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:53:00 GMT

As Jay suggested, I opened a Ladybug entry for this:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=53ae5577-02c2-40e7-a186-c4aa89f537bd

If you like the idea of usability enhancements for refactoring, go vote for the entry!

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

jaybaz [MS] — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 19:23:00 GMT

That's a great way to go, Bruce!

XP teaches the value of putting the decision making around feature set into the hands of customers.

Customer asks for features. Developer does rough costing. Customer selects which features they want to pay for next.

So, go to lady bug & vote!

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

David A. Mellis — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:20:00 GMT

And three days later, the developer has closed the bug. If we're lucky, we'll only have to wait three years for improvements.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

jaybaz [MS] — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:48:00 GMT

David,

You sound disappointed. As Anson notes, some of the feedback from this blog has already been incorportated into the VS2005 product. So you *have* had a real effect.

Some of it has been postponed, primarily because it's too large a change to fit into VS2005.

Customers have repeatedly told us that they like Whidbey the way it is, and they want it now! Any decisions that expand the scope of Whidbey just mean that it's even longer until you get the final product.

I firmly believe that the best thing we can do is ship, and then ship again. With all the feedback and learning we get from VS2005, the next version is sure to be a much better product.

That said, we're still plan to modify VS2005 features based on customer feedback. Some items have already been fixed, and some are still in the works. We look at every bug fix & suggestion. We look extra carefully at the highest-ranked suggestions, both by "rank" and count of votes.

So keep the feedback coming, and keep voting.

re: Whidbey Refactorings: Signature Change

David A. Mellis — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 22:11:00 GMT

Honestly, I'm not that disappointed that these refactorings interfaces won't make it into Whidbey. And I'm glad that the product feedback site exists and that the developers read and respond to it.

The rank or number of votes that a bug or suggestion receives, however, does not do a good job of indicating the overall customer opinion of its importance. The site makes it difficult to browse bugs by limiting searchs to 100 results. This means that new bugs are not likely to be discovered or voted on by other customers (though perhaps I'm wrong; can you find out how many people viewed Bruce's bug?). Nor are customers likely to vote on bugs that have already been resolved as "postponed" or "won't fix" (although again, perhaps you have data to suggest otherwise).

So while I agree that the selection of features should be in the hands of customers, I don't believe that the product feedback site does so. How much customer input did you get by leaving a bug open for three days with no ways for interested customers to discover (not find) it?

Another frustration is the long product cycle for Visual Studio. Clunky smart tags are a small annoyance and aren't worth delaying Whidbey for. But the inefficient refactoring interface will have pissed me off by the time the next version of VS comes out. If releases came every few months instead of every few years, I'd be less concerned with these minor UI quirks.

For this kind of interface design, there is less need for customer feedback than for intelligent design upfront. Are there designers, interaction experts, or other employees dedicated to the UI? Or is Visual Studio designed by its developers? Do you think the process works well?

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