Fixing BBEdit's Prev/Next problem

Posted 2005-03-31 @ 02:11:19

BBEdit 8.1 is out, featuring Subversion integration. Unfortunately, this new release also makes a seemingly minor change to two of my most commonly-used commands:

The Next/Previous document commands now work in MRU (most recently used) order. When closing a document, you will be taken to the most recently used document (previously you were taken to the next document in the list in the Documents Drawer).

This provides a user experience identical to that with documents in separate windows (where window z-order provided the MRU-like behavior).

UI consistency is generally a good thing, but not this time. Because the document list is sorted alphabetically, these commands sometimes hop around the list erratically, basically rendering them useless. Once this behavior was explained to me by Bare Bones Support, I gave it a whirl in an existing window, which had seven open documents.

To my dismay, I had to issue seven commands just to move from the current document to the one directly preceding it in the list. (I actually selected the desired doc on the fifth keystroke, but missed it & had to back up one.)

When I explained this to the fine folks at Bare Bones, and requested they revert to the previous model, they replied with a quick & easy solution:

There is a preference option not currently presented in the UI which you can set to control this behavior. You can adjust this option by issuing the following command in the Terminal (all on one line):

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit
MultiDocumentWindows:SurfNextPreviousInDrawerOrder -bool YES

If you set it to "YES", the Previous/Next Document commands will use the display ordering of documents; if you set it to "NO", they will select documents in most-recently-used order as currently.

No word as to whether this will be the case for future releases, but I just thought I'd share, in case anybody else is frustrated by this little 'gotcha'.