More dynamic explorer icons

As a developer, it can be difficult to determine the role of a particular object in the explorer. It often requires additional panels like looking at the properties or inspecting the viewport. This problem was identified when Scripts gained the RunContext property and the icon was made dynamic: it changes to the LocalScript icon when the RunContext is set to Client to make it obvious at a glance what the script’s role is.

There are other objects that would benefit from this behavior. Here’s my list:

  • Model’s icon should reflect its ModelStreamingMode, because the developer shouldn’t have to individually inspect Model objects to find out why their streaming behavior may be significantly different from a sibling model. This is an important property that shouldn’t be overlooked during development.
  • SpecialMesh’s icon should reflect its MeshType, because the mesh’s behavior fundamentally changes based on that property.
  • Part’s icon should reflect its Shape, because the part’s behavior fundamentally changes based on that property.
  • ScreenGui’s icon should reflect its ScreenInsets, because the ui’s behavior significantly changes baesd on that property. It’s expected that developers will have several of these objects at the top level of the PlayerGui for no reason other than to have separate configurations of ScreenInsets.
  • Tool’s icon should reflect its RequiresHandle, because the behavior of the tool fundamentally changes based on its value.
9 Likes

Bump. Also, a lot of the Value instances have the same symbol (#). If they changed the symbol to convey data visually we wouldn’t have to check the Class of the value.

2 Likes