Visual settings in the steps pane instead of a (sometimes) mile-long text list

[LoquitoPollo]

The settings field can easily become too long to see every active option and there's not necesarily any consistency between steps if they have differing options. What I mean by that is if you only set the "Do Not Record Result" (my favorite) option in one step, it will be on the left of the settings field. But if you now set several options on another step, the settings are not lined up so that it becomes hard to see at a quick glance which steps I forgot to not record (because TS still doesn't default to not recording steps). You have to analyze the settings line for each step.

I propose something more graphical and ordered. Here's my idea of at least ordered. The text could be replaced with icons representing each setting.

Then it would be graphical, ordered, and concise. What more can you ask for?

[warren_scott]

I like it.

even more if we can add/remove columns from that view (maybe I never want to see the column for precondition or do not record results).

even more if I can hover over the "x" in post expression and get a popup tip-strip with all the information.

[LoquitoPollo]

I guess I should've explicitly mentioned the tip strip, but I figured it could stay the same way. Or...perhaps users would find it more useful to just display the details for the one item they hover over...?

[warren_scott]

Another thing to consider is to make sure we have an accurate view of what the step settings are and whether they have been overridden (such as setting a step load options but the load options are overridden by the sequence file load options, or step results recording options being overridden by sequence record results options)

[warren_scott]

Even better would be if I could customize the columns myself. 

I can choose (for each column) the

   title = "PreExpression"

   Value = len(Step.TS.PreExpr) >0? "X" : " "

   HoverOver = Step.TS.PreExpr

This way I can create columns with my custom step variable information in them.

To some extent it would be nice to have this configurable per sequence in each sequence file (since different sequences generally have different steps that have different custom step variables), but that definitely becomes confusing especially with respect to where to store that configuration information.  I could see a "out of the box" set of columns and a "user configurable" set of columns.

[CoastalLabVIEWER]

Adding to this feature, in addition to displaying the information of the given setting, clicking on the "X" (or whatever it becomes) should take me directly to the menu of the step I click the X on.  So I can hover over the preexpression and if I see it is wrong or want to change it a single click takes me right to it rather than 3-4 clicks to get to the preexpression box.

[ChrisHawk]

Could this not be achieved already using a custom Step List Configuration and add Expression columns for each of that are wanted?  This has all that @warren_scott requested other than the hover over expression (which in itself would be a nice addition as a separate idea!)

For example could add a Lock column with an expression of Step.UseMutex ? "X" : ""

Would be good if this style of step list was one of the examples rather than you have to work out how to build it all yourself!