[TextMate] Web Preview Enhancements

[James Adam]

Hello all.

I'm not sure why people have seized upon this font-size issue. It is, 
as a few people have already noted, a minor point, and anyone who 
really cares can change it just like I did. What is *really* important 
are the other, functional behaviour changes I suggested:

1. Store the Base URL in the project file. Why must I retype this every 
time the Preview disappears, speaking of which:

2. Keep the preview open until *I* close it, don't make it disappear. 
If a user opened it, chances are they're doing web design, and they'll 
want to use it again. This shouldn't be hard, right?

3. Change the preview to display the contents of the current tab *if 
that tab is HTML*. Quick Hint: if you are syntax-highlighting something 
as HTML, you should sensibly be able to preview it. Likewise for PHP. 
This is a bit trickier, yes.

4. Have an option to update the view if *any* project file changes. 
This is probably on a par in implementational difficulty with the 
previous suggestion.

---

Justin says:
> Firefox and Safari and pretty much every other browser ship with 16px
> -- I'm 99% certain of this.  Eventually a preference is planned for 
> you 
> to pick your own I think.  When the first betas shipped, it was set to
> 12, but people complained about it not being like Safari and Firefox,
> so whatyagonnado?

Set it to the same value as Safari and Firefox - surely the majority of 
the mac browser share. Why would you ever set it differently? Why 
12pts? ...

> Can't please everyone until there's a font size preview -- and even if
> TM were to preview things EXACTLY the way YOU prefer (14px), it's only
> previewing your Safari/Firefox set-up, not previewing my set-up, or
> some guy down the road surfing the web on his XBox.

... if the font value was the same as the default for other browsers, 
you'd please *most* people. If that's 16pts, not 14pts, fine - i was 
just guessing as I hacked around. I could be wrong, and in this case, 
my eyes were a few pts out :)

My point is, why is TextMate deliberately different from what seems to 
be the standard here?

> It's a quick and handy HTML preview, not a full-on browser... and isn't
> that good enough?

For a preview to be useful, it needs to be somewhat accurate, 
especially if you are using it for CSS design. I don't ask for a full 
on browser (presumably by that you mean history, bookmarks?), just a 
quick pane that displays reasonably accurately what the page I'm 
hacking up will look like in most browsers.

Timothy says:
> I have to side with Justin here. You
> should leave the Browser default text size alone especially when
> testing design & accessibility.

I'm not suggesting that I'd want to change it as part of my design 
process. Just that it be set to a better default value.

I'll repeat - I don't understand why the OakWebPreview sets it's 
default to 12pts if the two most popular browsers are different. I'd 
love to hear a justification. A preference to change it at some point 
would be great, but clearly isn't high-priority, nor do I feel it 
should be. Just set the default sensibly - doesn't that better fit the 
TextMate philosophy of "no preferences"?

Someone wondered if anyone codes static HTML pages any more. Surely the 
answer is YES! Pretty much everyone does. Most design takes place using 
placeholder content - a static page - which is the broken up and fed to 
the appropriate dynamic parts of Rails, Smarty or whatever. If there 
are people designing html using only fragments and relying on dynamic 
systems to put them all together without even once just checking that 
the html jigsaw pieces they are carving fit together nicely, well kudos 
to you :) I must be old school, but I design the whole page first (with 
forethought, of course), and then separate the components into 
different files/functions.

Kumar said:
> I would also vote to not put too much development
> into WebPreview since Safari is only a command-tab + command-R away....
> unless there was a feature like SubEthaEdit that did WebPreview in
> realtime as you type.

The Web Preview *does* auto-update, like SubEthaEdit, unless I am 
imagining things, and that is what makes it most useful. Why hit the 
keyboard at all if you don't have to.

---

I've suggested some simple aesthetic changes, and some simple 
behavioural changes that AFAIK won't take more than a few hours 
consideration, but will surely improve the usefulness of the Web 
Preview feature for those of us that do feel it is handy. The font-size 
note is tiny compared to these other 'ideas'.

Does anyone else think Web Preview is useful? If you don't use it... 
you've not lost anything. If you do, you've gained a lot.

I hope I've made my case more effectively here, thanks for reading guys.

- James