 | "Not a 5 star production!" I think we can all agree that one's reputation is very important. You have rated a rather sloppy freeware program 5 stars and it does not deserve this kind of recognition. I recently did a detailed analysis and here is what I found:
What you have hear is a critique of Liberty Basic Toolbox. A shameless attempt to rip off Liberty Basic Workshop. Let me ask you – do you want just a toolbox on your next project, or a whole workshop? Well that is what I wanted to know, so I downloaded the program, installed it and took a look. Here is what I found:
1. Array maker does not error check for variable type and does not select a default. Lets you think you are creating array elements without an error message.
2. Not a true MDI interface – (or at the minimum it is a kludge) – code window when expanded covers up the editor controls window.
3. There is no window management (tile, cascade, minimize all etc) for multiple windows. You can not bring multiple windows to the foreground once covered up by another since there is no window menu.
4. Maximized code windows do not come to the top when give focus if other windows are on top of them.
5. When running code using LB integration, the Toolbox capture and hold focus, causing LB to be buried and not visable.
6. I set my font to Sylus BT (my favorite) but the editor remains in this microscopic mono-type font. Further research reveals that changes to the options only effects window that you open AFTER the changes are made, not the current windows that are open.
7. Font size options are ignored all around. There is no way to make fonts larger than the itty-bitty microscopic size they are.
8. The options window is cluttered and the intent is unclear without a save of commit button.
9. File menu on code form is miss-aligned when form is maximized.
10. Clicking Run Program without any code seems to bring up the LB help window.
11. Once a groupbox is created, it is not possible to draw controls in it. They must be draw outside of the groupbox and then drug into the groupbox. Trying to draw the control in the groupbox causes the mouse to grab and drag the groupbox.
12. The graphicbox has the same problem as the groupbox.
13. You can place controls into a graphic box (this is permitted in code in LB as well), but once they are place, if the graphicbox is moved, they are buried below the graphicbox and can not be seen again.
14. The editor has a novel Lock Controls feature, but there is no indicator to tell you whether the controls are locked or unlocked. Individual controls can not be locked. This would be a great feature!
15. A really HUGE problem with the GUI editor is the inability to set the control properties for custom handle extension names as well as event handler names.
16. This is a pet peeve of mine: the control toolbox defaults back to the pointer after each control is set, causing me to have to select the control I want again, event when I am placing 10 of the same control in a row!
17. There is a nice control viewer under the GUI toolbox, but it seems to serve no useful purpose. Clicking the control name does not select the control on the form, neither does it bring up properties.
18. There is a weird “Control Properites On-Top” button on the toolbar, but it does not seem to be of much use. It the code form is maximized, the underlying toolbar is hidden and can not be accessed at all. If you drag the code window to near maximum size, it can become useful, but the effect of bringing it to the top is most unsettling.
19. The menu editor does what it should, however it is easy to menus where you don’t want them as the selected line where you are inserting becomes unselected after each insert.
20. The menu editor does not let you set the menu item properties, such as the event handler.
21. I sure don’t like being forced to save my GUI file before code is generated. I often just whip something up. I have no intention of ever keeping the GUI file. This should be optional.
22. I can’t set the HANDLE of my windows I create – this is really bad and requires I retype handle names if I plan to use the GUI editor and code editor to create a program that has two different windows open at the same time. This same issue applies to ALL control handle extensions.
23. Some of the help seems to be lifted nearly (but not exactly) word for work from the Liberty Basic help file.
24. I asked for a Graphic Type window, but the code generated specified a Window type window. This also happened when I specified a dialog modal window.
25. All code uses the EXACT same conventions used by Alyce Watson’s LB Workshop. An original work should show some originality here.
26. There is a Run Form button, which pruportably says it will show the form operation without having to compile the program in LB. I saw very little benefit from this feature. The radio buttons all did what radio buttons do as did check marks - but my combobox, texteditor, textbox and listbox did not do anything.
27. The GUI editor should not support adding menus to Dialog window types, as they are not valid in those window types – this is a bug.
28. When I close a program I wrote that was shelled out to LB to run, LB should close and go away when the program is ended normally – I did notice that the LB window is closed and then reopened when the program is run again. Based on later reading (of the helpfile – item 43) I learned that this is by design. I also learned that there is a button called “close all LB Windows” to close those windows. It works.
29. The process of removing a control is not real intuitive. The command should at least be called DELETE control.
30. I got the editor to select the window type Dialog by closing ALL designer windows and loading a saved window (that was actually Dialog Modal). It has menus attached. The window type function is clearly broken.
31. The ASCII chart is nice.
32. I don’t know what the purpose of previewing a color dialog or font dialog would be.
33. The snippets MGR is nice. No snippets though. There is an interesting bug in the snippets manager that will not allow it to be on top while a GUI designer window is open. Weird!
34. The message box creator is nice, but appears to be a feature for feature clone of the one found in LBWorkshop.
35. The icon maker is nice and again remenicent of LBW. It has some particular weird issues though – when minimized it does not minimize to the application minimization area or to the Windows toolbar. It seems to minimize to the desktop and then can get lost behind stuff. That’s a bug.
36. The helpfile says that CTRL-D will delete a control. That does not work.
37. The killProgram feature always comes back with a message “No Programs to kill” even if it actually kills a program.
38. The editor does not have an integrated code printing function – it relies on LB to print your source code, spawing LB for the task. The GUI editor can not print a GUI.
39. Help lacks any indexing of topics, making it difficult to use.
40. I could not figure out what to do with bookmarks once they were set. There seemed to be no way to go to them form somewhere else.
41. The helpfile claims that the editor features a context menu when you right click. While you do get a nice pop-up menu, there is no context involved. It is the WHOLE editor menu available everywhere. It would be nice if there were some real context sensitive options off the right menu – now it is just a lazy person’s shortcut menu!
42. The code completion is a nice feature, one you see in many editors. It would be nice if it contained more than just the handful LB functions and commands. More than 60% of the LB language is directed commands that are sent to a control – none of these appear in the code completion!
43. The helpfile says this: “- If invoked within ToolBox, Liberty Basic runs as a background window in order to minimize distractions, which is great if your code is bug free: your program runs and displays. However, if you run code with errors, LB breaks on first error and you have to click its icon on the task bar at the bottom of the screen to display its window.” – to which I have to ask – if the LB editor window is hidden how do I know that I have an error? This is the wrong design decision.
In the final analysis – LB Toolbox seems to have some unfinished tools. It does produce code that will run in LB for the most part. Based on the opportunities I see here, I would say the price is right (FREE). I would lean toward a program that gave me a little more control over my code before generation. Since LB Toolbox seems to be an attempt to COPY Alyce Watson’s shareware application Liberty Basic Workshop, let me mention that it is the superior product. It has many more tools, full code completion, complete control over your code even before it is generated, many more useful tools including a snippets library that is populated. In addition, Alyce wrote the book (literally) on Liberty Basic. She knows what an editor should do and what it should not do.
by: Brad
| 2 | 2005-03-03 |
