All SmartGit settings in a single dialog

Agreed! It's maddening trying to find which of the 5 different settings dialogs (which which sub-section within each) contains the option you're looking for.

Another nice feature of the Visual Studio dialog is that there's a "filter" box at the top that lets you type text and it immediately filters out options that are unrelated to that text. This really helps you find an option when you know it exists but you cannot remember where it's nested.

For example: no filter

and with a "color" filter

Implementing this along with the "All smartgit.properties settings should be discoverable and editable in a UI dialog" request would go a long way towards improving the usability and discoverability of all the powerful features in SmartGit.

I'd rather tend to do the opposite and spread the options to the places where they actually act. One example are the new options in the Branches and Journal views in the 3-lines-popups. I'm sure, this is easier to discover. Options that act on multiple places, I'd try to keep in the preferences.

It makes sense to me to have global settings all in one dialog (perhaps organized in tabs by area), and then per-branch settings in a separate dialog.

Example:

Before:

• Repository -> Settings
• Remote -> Properties
• Edit -> Preferences
• Edit -> Customize
• Changes -> Settings
• smartgit.properties file

After:

• Edit -> Settings -> Current Repository -> <keep existing dialog tabs>
• Edit -> Settings -> Current Repository -> <new tab: "Remote Properties>
• Edit -> Settings -> Application -> <keep existing structure>
• Edit -> Settings -> Application -> <old "Edit->Customize" tabs become new "Customize->Accelerators, Customize->ToolBars">
• Edit -> Settings -> Application -> <old "Changes->Settings" tabs become new "Customize->Changes Window" items>
• Edit -> Settings -> Application -> <smartgit.properties items now editable/discoverable via new "Advanced" item>

That solves the problem of having global vs per-repo properties clustered separately, yet reduces the 6 different settings dialogs down to 2

Let's take a look at the Changes -> Settings dialog. It only effects the belonging view unless you select the "Remember as default" option. This you would lose if you would only have one preferences option.

The Repository | Settings and Remote | Properties dialogs work on the selected repository or remote. Making them available in the Preferences dialog would be very bad UX because the preferences never work on any selection.

I agree that it's all very complicated, and that I don't quite understand how complicated it is -- which underscores the need to reduce the complexity of the current settings/customization options.

I don't have the perfect solution here, but it does appear to be a usability issue in its current incarnation; how much of an issue I suppose depends on how many votes this suggestion receives.

Anyone else have a better idea how to improve this situation?