Quote Originally Posted by Aurel View Post
I really don't understand people who need any sort of Visual designer for programming GUI
programs.Probably i am not used to that way of programming.
And i doubt that this way speed up any kind of programming task.
Probably do when you have lot of controls in one window(dialog).
Aurel,

Thanks for your feedback.

I think I know what you mean. When I first tried to learn visual programming in early 1980's (on VAX/VMS/FMS and DEC Windows/X Windows) I found form designing very confusing and a big slow-down on my production rate. Even now with my old bloated VB project I am often not sure where all the different bits of code are floating around. Some bits are hiding in buttons, some in forms, some in the main program. For me one of many nice things about beginning to learn thinBasic is to find nice, individual, compact, self-contained scripts. And each script contains all the script-specific logic in one place. Which is great.

At the same time I agree with Chris and Petr about some benefits of an effective Form Designer/GUI Designer/UI Designer. I guess that having one could help to attract more programmers to using thinBasic. When I worked with end-users I also found that involving them in form design using a visual drag and drop tool helps to increase their commitment to an application. Even if they just choose the color of the buttons. This is especially true of users in HR and Marketing and PR departments!

But does thinBasic "need" a visual UI designer? I am reading that Eros puts passion before profit; the results of the community are often beautiful (IMO). Maybe attracting large numbers of new users is not the aim of the game. For me the best restaurants to eat in, and work in, are those which do not wish to become like MacDonalds.

For me (as a programmer) Petr's Visual UI Designer is good because...
1) It lets me see at a glance what kinds of control are AVAILABLE that I might use
2) It lets me quickly produce a Visual Form and an associated Dialog script skeleton without having to browse through documentation about structures, methods and parameters.
3) (IMO, from review of forum history) Petr seems to be always making newer and better things. I think perhaps that he is robot-assisted.

This is getting too long. So I will stop.