Further Refinement

Well, after a couple of weeks my most recent project has seen two beta releases, numerous bugfixes, and some of the feedback I've received has gone right back into the IDE. In fact, sometimes I'm amazed by the things I miss: the first beta had no way to open a project from within the program! I still shake my head in disbelief at that one. Beta 3 should see the light of day this week. I spent this week bugfixing and making minor tweaks. I also split the code on my hard drive into a stable branch and a development branch. The stable one isn't getting any new features -- only bugfixes -- so that there is a solid foundation for people to work with. The development branch has seen some smaller features this week, such as support for executing shell scripts bundled into projects, some tweaks to PalEdit's default keybindings, some more tweaks to better integrate the editor and the project manager, and so forth.

The big thing that I really got excited about this week was actually doing some development with Paladin. I found a couple of bugs and found plenty of ways to do some refining. Right now, one of my personal favorite features over BeIDE is the New File window. If I want to add a new class to the project, I can hit Alt+N, type in the name of the file, hit Tab and then Space to check the box to create both the header and the source file, and then Enter. In a matter of a few seconds, I have both a header and a source file and the header already has the header guard filled in for me. Sure, it's just a little thing, but with as often as I add new files to my projects, it's a nice convenience. The same goes for just being able to add a particular system library to a project just by checking a box in a window. Small, thoughtful touches to an interface don't amount to much on their own, but their combined helpfulness paves the way for a more pleasant experience overall.