Sometimes it’s very easy to gloss over new features, and to get bogged down into implementation details of new features, especially if they aren’t 100% how we think they should be implemented.
But I just had a chance to use two Keyboard Maestro Editor windows, not just for testing but in am actual “Hey, this would be handy right now!” scenario and this is a great feature.
It also doesn’t feel like a feature that has gotten enough attention for being as big-of-a-deal as I think it is.
Thanks @peternlewis! I look forward to “taking a screenshot of one macro so I can refer to it while editing another macro” never ever again.
It is a great feature, but has one severe handicap: Opening a 2nd window of the same macro can cause the response to typing to slow down to a crawl, IF the macro is a long and complex macro.
Every change you make to the macro in one window is immediately made in the other window, causing the 2nd window to be completely re-rendered for each keystroke.
Yes, you’ve mentioned this before, and I recognize it as an area for improvement.
But please note the very first line of my original post:
I guess I could have explicitly added “or has a bug in a particular use-case” but I was considering that part of it.
Just because something is not perfect in 100% of cases doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be celebrated for what it is.
In my case, looking at two similar-but-different macros and being able to drag actions from one to the other was invaluable, and something I couldn’t do before.
HOW "long and complex" is TOO long and complex? More than 50 actions? More than 100? 500? What if groups are collapsed so the enclosed actions are hidden?
Have you experimented with what makes a difference?
Those are all relative terms and depend greatly on what kind of actions a macro contains. I have some macros that contain dozens if not a hundred actions (some of which are actually sub-routines), that don't cause any issues. Then I have a few that are less than 10 actions but the editor doesn't like them haha.
I have found that actions that query some other part of the OS (like found images, menu item actions and such) can cause a lag even on smaller macros, I imagine because they are constantly checking to see if the image or menu items exists etc.
You mentioned groups being collapsed helping, that definitely helps in my case. I make it a practice to always collapse actions and groups once I'm done editing them so that 1) it keeps things tidy, and 2) it doesn’t cause lag because of some action that's buried 3 levels deep looking for an image or menu item.
