Working with perspectives

Perspectives define the window's layout in Developer Studio. Use Eclipse commands to:

• Customize an existing perspective.
• Use the alternative Editor perspective to view only the tabs and editors you need when you are editing an object. 
• Create a custom perspective.

Working with custom perspectives

Use the following procedures to save, open, and switch to custom perspectives.

To save a custom perspective

1. Select Window > Save Perspective As.
2. In the Save Perspective As dialog box, give the perspective a name and click OK.

To open a perspective

1. Select Window > Open Perspective > Other.

2. In the Open Perspective dialog box, select the appropriate perspective and click OK.

   When you start Developer Studio, it opens the perspectives that were open when you last exited. If the perspective that has the input focus does not display the AR System Navigator, Developer Studio does not display the Login dialog box. To display the Login dialog box, switch to a perspective that displays the AR System Navigator or open it in the current perspective.

   One way to use a custom perspective is to set it up for specific work and switch to it when you need it. For example, you can set up a Form Edit perspective (as shown in the figure in To detach a tab below) and switch to it to edit a form.

To switch to another open perspective

• Click the icon or name of the perspective in the Perspective bar in the top left corner of the Developer Studio window.

Editor perspective

Developer Studio includes an Editor perspective, used for editing objects.  Open the Editor perspective and switch to it when you need a large editor area. This perspective has the Properties tab in the top right corner, the Outline in the bottom right corner, and the Messages and Relationships tabs and the AR System Navigator in a tab group in the bottom left.

Editor perspective

Working with tabs

The default layout of the Developer perspective includes five groups of tabs arranged around the editor area. Each tab group has command buttons that apply to the tab in the group that is selected.

To open a closed tab

• Select Window > Show View and select the view (tab) from this submenu.
  The Analyzer, Progress, Relationships, and Search Results tabs open automatically when needed.

To move a tab

1. Click and drag the tab until the mouse pointer becomes an arrow.
   The arrow points to the location for the tab.
2. Complete one of the following steps:
   • Drop the tab when the grey drag frame is where you want the new tab group.
     Editor tab groups must be in the editor area.
     Use this step to work with editors or object lists side by side or one above another.
   • Drop the tab into the destination tab group.
     The following figure shows the result of dragging the Properties tab into the tab group with the Outline tab. 
     

To access a tab in a tab group that is not visible

1. Click the Show List button at the right of the tabs.
2. In the list of views or editors, click the one to show.
   The views whose tabs are not visible are shown in boldface in the list.

To work in a minimized view tab group

1. Click the tab's icon (not the Restore icon) for the tab that you want to use.
   The tab opens temporarily.
2. Perform the operations in the open tab.
3. Click the tab's Minimize button to minimize the view again.
   If you click any other tab or editor, the temporarily opened tab minimizes again.
   Use this procedure to work in the Outline or Properties tab when you have an editor maximized.

To restore a tab group

• Click Restore in the minimized tab group toolbar.
  If all other tab groups are minimized when one is maximized, clicking any Restore button restores them all.

To detach a tab

1. Right-click the tab and select Detached.
2. Move and resize the detached window as needed.
   Use this procedure to work in a maximized editor with the Outline or Properties tab in a separate window on your desktop.
   The following figure shows the Property tab detached with the form editor maximized. 
   
3. To reattach a detached view, right-click the tab and select Detached to clear the check mark

To reset the perspective to its default layout

1. Select Window > Reset Perspective.
2. Click OK in the confirmation dialog box.
   Resetting the Developer perspective closes all object list views.