Next Gen Explorer Beta: Performance and Quality Improvements

[parker02311]

@beastoftheeast0

Missing support for custom icon sets like Vanilla

This entire update is great, but the lack of custom icon support is a downer. I really hope this gets addressed sooner rather then after it’s out of beta.

[EmeraldSlash (Rio)]

@beastoftheeast0

When using Explorer on monitors with different DPI, the text may get blurry. Let us know if you encounter this issue!

Yep, it is indeed blurry with 150% DPI scaling on my 4k monitor. I’m curious why this is happening since it’s written in Luau? Plugin widgets do not have this problem.

[vvv331 (vvv)]

Impressive performance!
Are there plans to bring back what sorting was before (by class and name, compared to what it is right now, just name) and is bug with setting object property using new explorer solved? (trying to pick anything in explorer always sets it nil)
Hopefully things will get ironed out in the future to make user experience pleasant.

[Dogekidd2012]

@Dekkonot

…How? I’m really curious to know how we got this far but nobody thought “we should support custom icons” before now? What are you using to get the icons for classes?

We all thought it, and people internally did fight quite hard for it, but Explorer is a ton of small features and we only had so much time to work on it before the time we felt is was ready to get feedback on. We’re using StudioService:GetClassIcon, which doesn’t support it–the work is already very much underway to support it, it just wasn’t finished in time in favor of more pressing things.

[Dogekidd2012]

@parker02311

This entire update is great, but the lack of custom icon support is a downer. I really hope this gets addressed sooner rather then after it’s out of beta.

Everything in that list will be solved before the beta is released to everyone. The work is already underway to support it, and the fixes in this area will be exposed to all developers who are using StudioService:GetClassIcon.

[idelww]

This sounds like quite a good feature until you try it out.
I love how everything is smoother and faster, however there’s some major issues with this, first of all, there’s too much space in between each instance, compared to the old menu, and the text on “unselected” items is grey for some unnecessary reasons, which makes the instances look similar to “disabled scripts” which can become quite an issue.

I think making the text black, or atleast closer to black, and keeping the old spacing would just make it better. There’s no reason to have so much space in between, here’s a comparison between old and new.

I will be sticking with the old one personally, as it is much more compact and looks better to the eye. I don’t like the spacing on the new one nor the grey text

Edit: I think some personalization would be nice allowing us to keep our instances closer to each other so we can see and select more at once, as well as the color of the text.

[beastoftheeast0 (ashvin)]

Totally hear you. We want to add icon support shortly so stay tuned for that. We definitely feel your pain with smooth scrolling – we plan on fixing this in the new year.

[Dogekidd2012]

@JustDevv

I should be able to search for an object, select it, then clear my search query and still have my selection be focused so I can examine its children while live testing.

I already have a pull request up to fix this. I expect it to deploy in about a day or so.

[wengawenga]

@JustDevv

Also a way to zoom it would be nice, at the moment it displays less content than the normal explorer

Hi!

Could you explain more about “a way to zoom”?
Right now if you are in Explorer and Press “F”, you can quickly focus on the selected item. Is it something matching your expectation?

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

Love this update! However, I really wish the plus icon was right next to the instance name like the old version, and I hope we can configure the padding through the explorer settings in the future. (Perhaps a slider or a box that we can input values in that allows us to change the padding to a certain level?)

[TimeFrenzied (big _jimmy)]

I don’t believe this will mess up icon packs; you should still be able to use custom icons.

@pyxfluff

the smooth scrolling (it’s annoying)

If this is true, I wonder why they even added this. It’s like when you move your mouse and the camera moves 3 seconds after.

@pyxfluff

the spacing (it’s like it’s optimized for touch almost; way to far out)

Judging from images sent in the thread, It looks ALMOST the same as before. I think this is a good thing.

[Uzixt (Uzi)]

Impressive!
The only immediate issue I’m facing is that when I’m dragging instances around the explorer, I can’t scroll up and down the explorer with the middle mouse wheel (whilst holding down left click on an instance and dragging it). it’s pretty janky/glitchy - probably something to do with the smooth scrolling behaviour?

[Elttob (dphfox)]

Already been not-so-secretly daily driving this for the past couple of days, and I have to say - I really like this!

I noticed keybinds get all sorts of messed up while you’re in the Script Editor though - it’s a royal pain in the bum to copy, paste, duplicate or delete scripts while I’m working

Other than that, a big fan of everything going on here! I personally quite like the smooth scrolling, though I do wish it was properly running at my monitor’s native refresh rate - it barely hits 60 FPS on my big screen while scrolling through a large place file due to the amount of UI on the screen.

[Dogekidd2012]

@Elttob

I noticed keybinds get all sorts of messed up while you’re in the Script Editor though - it’s a royal pain in the bum to copy, paste, duplicate or delete scripts while I’m working

Known issue, I know the fix, expecting it to be knocked out in January.

[Dogekidd2012]

@Elttob

though I do wish it was properly running at my monitor’s native refresh rate - it barely hits 60 FPS on my big screen while scrolling through a large place file due to the amount of UI on the screen

Just deployed some pretty dramatic performance fixes. Can you restart Studio until you see the title bar saying Explorer (v0.7), and see if that improved anything?

[JustDevv]

Oh sorry, I mean changing the text size so we can display more content in the explorer list at once.

[pyxfluff (Pyx)]

No, it is more spaced out.

Next Gen Explorer Beta: Performance and Quality Improvements

This sounds like quite a good feature until you try it out. I love how everything is smoother and faster, however there’s some major issues with this, first of all, there’s too much space in between each instance, compared to the old menu, and the text on “unselected” items is grey for some unnecessary reasons, which makes the instances look similar to “disabled scripts” which can become quite an issue. I think making the text black, or atleast closer to black, and keeping the old spacing woul…

[CSJeverything]

Added the issues that I noticed so far (the last few days). I’m sure that some are already known though.

Thanks to the team behind this!

[Elttob (dphfox)]

Unfortunately not. And I guess you get a free error message too! - I have no idea when or why that came up.

[TimeFrenzied (big _jimmy)]

@beastoftheeast0

We’re adding hierarchy lines to make it easier to see hierarchy relationships between instances. You’ll see vertical lines on the left-hand side that delineate where each hierarchy level starts and ends.

@beastoftheeast0

We’re adding selection highlights to a selected object’s hierarchy. Now, when you select an object, you’ll receive a clear indication of the objects contained within your selection’s hierarchy, so you can easily orient yourself within the Explorer and understand the scope of any potential changes. This is toggleable in the 3 dot menu to the right of the Explorer search bar!

This is a game changer to the point I might switch to this.

@beastoftheeast0

We’ve significantly improved the Explorer context menu. Right-clicking on instances will no longer bring up a laundry list of greyed-out options; it is now a concise list of actions relevant to your selected object, split into nested categories. Here’s an example of the new context menu in action:

@beastoftheeast0

We’ve made shift + select much more feature-rich. Previously, it would naively select everything from the top to the bottom, regardless of hierarchy. This would often make selections that would break if you, for instance, drag to another location, or if you want to change properties. The new behavior will try to be conscious about the hierarchy of your selection.

Awesome for QOL, not much to say here.

@beastoftheeast0

We’re adding new Explorer settings to help you better customize your editing experience, accessible through the 3 dot menu to the right of the Explorer search bar:

I love options!