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Issue: 13.3 (May/June 2015)
Author: Markus Winter
Author Bio: Markus is a Molecular Biologist who taught himself REALbasic programming in 2003 to let the computer deal with some exceedingly tedious lab tasks. Some call it lazy, he thinks it smart. He still thinks of himself as an advanced beginner at best.
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Article Length (in bytes): 8,183
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Article Number: 13309
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With the introduction of the new framework and 64-bit coming soon it might finally be time for me to move on from REALstudio 2012 to Xojo 2015. One of the things that has stopped me from doing so before, despite having a valid license, was the lack of a dedicated tab for organizing your project. As a consequence, the IDE can seem cluttered—however there are a few things you can do to ameliorate the situation.

Tip 1: Folders, Folders, and more Folders

The Xojo IDE is basically a mix of functions: the project tab and the code editor from the REALstudio IDE. In that, it resembles a window in the Mac's Finder or the Window's Explorer displaying a long list of different items. Such a long list makes it difficult to navigate and find what you are looking for. But as you organize those files in folders, you can also organize them with folders in the Xojo IDE. I actually find that I need to excessively use folders to at least partially separate these two functions again and keep larger projects well organized.

Tip 2: Labels everywhere

One of the most used interface elements is one that few people worry about: the common Label. You set it up, you position it, and in most cases you don't spend a second thought on it. However, Labels are important: for example data entry would be pretty chaotic if entry fields didn't have Labels to tell you what to enter. Consequently, Labels are everywhere ... and they tend to clutter up the IDE.

However, most of the time, a Label is exactly that: "a Label"—and it doesn't matter what it is called. So to reduce clutter you could just call all your Labels aLabel. That will put all the Labels into a control set where all the Labels are distinguished by their Index. However, in the IDE you can now simply close the control set to hide all its members from view, thereby reducing the visual clutter and making it easier to concentrate on the important items (and yes, it acts just like another folder in this regard).

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