[CLOSED] console error indicator for status bar

[core-ai-bot]

Issue by zaggino
Friday Apr 25, 2014 at 04:11 GMT
Originally opened as adobe/brackets#7639

---

Old Subject: error icon for main-toolbar

This is something I've made out of need when working with Brackets especially on non-brackets projects (when I don't have my Brackets developer console open) to see if something wrong happened inside Brackets immediately.

From my experience many users don't use console to look for errors before reporting an issue so having a red icon appearing on the main toolbar might help also to non-developers.

Leaving to your consideration if this's a good idea for a default extension, or if I should move it to the extension registry. I'm fine with both.

Looks like this:

---

zaggino included the following code: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/pull/7639/commits

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by redmunds
Friday Apr 25, 2014 at 18:32 GMT

---

@zaggino This is pretty cool. We talked about it in the team meeting today, and would need to see the following changes for this to go into master:

• Move it to the status bar which is a more appropriate place for this
• While this is great for devs, we're concerned that this could be disconcerting to users that aren't Dev Tools savvy, so it should have a Debug menu command to toggle it on/off and the default is off.
• This seems to fit with DebugCommands, so merge it there

Of course, you're welcome to keep it as it is and release it as an extension, but this would be great to have in core Brackets.

At one time, Brackets had an option to "open dev tools on exception". It would be nice to have something like that again. This would also need to have toggle switch. If you want to try to get this working, be sure to test case when dev tools window is already open, the existing window should be re-used (and optimally brought to front) instead of opening new window (which was a problem with original feature).

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by zaggino
Saturday Apr 26, 2014 at 06:51 GMT

---

@redmunds take a look now please if this's what you've meant

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by redmunds
Saturday Apr 26, 2014 at 21:12 GMT

---

@zaggino Nice! We'll have to get@larz0 to give it a UX review.

Seems like it should get inserted at left end (of the status bar indicators on the right side) so all other indicators are not shifted when it's toggled on/off.

Not sure if you have access to a Windows system, but hit the Insert key and watch how the INS/OVR indicator does a single pulse when it changes. That might help you notice when error number is incremented (but it might have to be debounced in case where several errors come in very quickly).

I like how clicking on the status bar indicator opens Dev Tools. The mouse pointer should change to a hand in the hover state.

It might be nice to have a way to clear the count. I could see wanting to do that if you've looked at the console log and understand all the errors, then you could clear the count so it's easier to tell when new errors happen.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by MarcelGerber
Saturday Apr 26, 2014 at 21:58 GMT

---

You could also event console.clear() to reset the count.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by larz0
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:04 GMT

---

@zaginno I agree with@redmunds that it should be on the left end. I can't get the error count to show in the status bar for some reason despite having errors in dev tools.

From the screenshot you provided looks like we could use a space after ":".

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by MarcelGerber
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:20 GMT

---

@larz0 He already added the space in 24be428

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by larz0
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:23 GMT

---

@SAPlayer ahh awesome!

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by redmunds
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:27 GMT

---

@larz0 In the Debug menu, toggle it on with "Show Errors in Status Bar".

I wrote a simple extension that adds a "Randy Test" item to Debug menu and causes an exception every time you click it:

/*jslint vars: true, plusplus: true, devel: true, nomen: true, indent: 4, maxerr: 50, regexp: true */
/*global define, brackets, $, window */

define(function (require, exports, module) {
    "use strict";

    var CommandManager      = brackets.getModule("command/CommandManager"),
        Menus               = brackets.getModule("command/Menus");

    function randyTest() {
        // Force an exception
        Menus.nonExistentFunction();
    }

    CommandManager.register("Randy Test", "randy-test", randyTest);

    Menus.getMenu("debug-menu").addMenuItem("randy-test");
});

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by zaggino
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:27 GMT

---

@larz0 have you turned it on in Debug menu? It won't show without it. I'll move it to the left.

Btw is it a good thing that status bar dissapears when viewing images or no file is open?

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by redmunds
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:42 GMT

---

@zaggino The current design is to only show status bar for files being edited (not viewed). Not sure if we've considered any other designs.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by larz0
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 20:45 GMT

---

@redmunds thanks that worked.

@zaggino we can show the status bar in image view if there's a need for it. Right now the info we get above the image is enough.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by zaggino
Monday Apr 28, 2014 at 22:40 GMT

---

comments implemented, you can clear now with console.clear as suggested by@SAPlayer

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by redmunds
Tuesday Apr 29, 2014 at 01:52 GMT

---

@larz0 This is ready for another review.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by larz0
Tuesday Apr 29, 2014 at 02:41 GMT

---

@zaggino@redmunds looks good! Just realized that we should probably add a tooltip that says something along the lines of "Show Errors in Dev Tools…".

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by zaggino
Tuesday Apr 29, 2014 at 03:18 GMT

---

It won't navigate you exactly to the errors so just "Show Developer Tools" would probably be more accurate description of the click action?