Hello Greg,
I hope you like New Zealand so far.
After working a few months with the EE2 code editor on a rather complex project, I have gathered a few suggestions to make the programmer's life a little bit easier.
Before mentioning these things I'd like to express, that I quite like working with EE2 on cross platform projects and that I appreciate what you have done there.
1) See open files
This is really one of the most annoying things. We need to see which files are open. Have a button bar on top with little "x"es to close files (just like in VS or Firefox). It makes switching between files you are actively working on so much easier. Highlight the currently visible file there, then you don't need to display the current object in red in the tree.
Actually, showing open objects in general (images, UI, everything you can edit) would make perfect sense.
2) Improved code highlighting
The current coloring of comments, text, keywords etc. is fine. Extend it to functions and defines (incl. enums).
Example:
http://wholetomato.com/products/features/color.asp
And I think the color settings in Settings.txt don't work.
3) Tabs
Use real tabs instead of space characters.
4) Search
Can you also add the F4 hotkey for "next search result", like in VS.
Also, how about an option to search through all applications in the active project? Especially when a project has server and client, this would make finding something easier.
5) Make features optional
Some code editing features should be made configurable. While it's not a bad idea to auto-add a closing bracket when adding "(", doing it all the time becomes rather annoying. Simply give the user the choice.
Some of these feature are:
- auto closing brackets
- auto-add space after "||" or "&&"