Something I noticed about XMod Pro 4 users: when they needed to work on more than one file at a time, a lot of them opened several browser tabs, one file per tab, and clicked back and forth between them.
I never suggested that. They worked it out on their own, because the need was real. You’re almost never working on a single form by itself. A form collects the data, a view displays it back, and there’s often a feed involved too. They’re parts of one application and they depend on each other. The form writes to fields the view reads. They share field names and data types. Change one and you usually have to go check another.
Browser tabs were never built for that, though. Each one is a separate editing session with no idea the others are open. If you loaded the same file in two tabs, made edits in both, and saved, the last save won and wiped out the other one. I know because it happened to me. The workaround was good enough most of the time, and then once in a while it cost someone hours of work.
So one file at a time had to go.
Version 5 puts every open file in its own tab, right inside the editor, the same as VS Code or any modern desktop editor. Open as many as you want and click between them.
It’s the same thing people were already doing with browser tabs, except now it actually works for editing. All the tabs belong to one session, so there’s no way for two of them to fight over the same file. The form and the view stay open together. You click over to check a field name, click back, and the view is right where you left it. You don’t have to keep half the application memorized just to get through one change.
Each tab carries the file’s name, a marker if the file has unsaved changes, and an icon for the kind of resource it is. The icons are color-coded: blue for forms, green for views, purple for feeds, cyan for projects. Those colors run through the whole application, not just the tabs, so blue always means a form and green always means a view wherever you see them. That matters here because XMP lets a form and a view share a name, which happens naturally when they belong to the same application. With both open, the names match but the icons don’t, so a glance at the icon and its color tells you which is which.
I also didn’t want to stop at the bare minimum. You can drag tabs to reorder them. Right-click a tab and you get the options you’d want: Close, Close Other Tabs, Close Tabs to the Right, Close All Tabs, and Close Saved Tabs.
Close Saved Tabs is the one I reach for most. Once you’ve had ten files open for a while, the ones you’ve already saved are just taking up room, while the ones with unsaved changes are the ones you want to watch. That option closes the saved files and leaves the rest alone.
If you’ve used a modern editor, none of this is new to you. Tabs, dragging to reorder, a right-click menu that does what you expect. There’s nothing to learn, which is the idea.
If you were one of the browser-tab people, you’ll notice the difference the first time you open a second file. You were already working this way. Now the tool does it for you instead of leaving you to rig it up yourself.
It also connects to another new feature, Projects. You can group the forms, views, and feeds for an application into a project, then open all of them at once, each in its own tab, with a single click. I’ll get to that in its own post.
Tabbed editing is in the public beta now. If you’re a current XMod Pro customer, you can download it from the Downloads section and try it on a test site. The announcement post has the details on requirements, the 90-day expiry, and how to report anything you run into.
Discuss XMod Pro 5 Beta