In the palette view Nodes get category that are stored in a list of some order. The name could be Capitalised, lowercase. 3th party nodes could also use the same category as core nodes.
This feature request is about organized order of nodes in the palette
The core nodes that are included in Node-Red should have a category name that is key name. In other words it means if a user develop node/nodes and use the same category name. Error will output with suggestion to change the category name.
All category names should be capitalised. If not a error will return to give hint that category name is not capitalised. Other approach could be to have a check if category name is capitalised.
The category names used in core Node-Red is separate sorted from 3th party developers category name sorting. The palette view could also be split view from core nodes and 3th party nodes.
I hope some of this suggestion make sense, feel free to comment.
The idea for this feature request is about making it more logic to find nodes. I know there is other ways to find Nodes. From UI designer view, or approach it could look so much better in palette view. :), do you not agree.
actually I disagree completely ... in fact I would go as far as to want to encourage developers to re-use the existing categories (as long as they are appropriate) rather than keep adding new ones.
@dceejay
It doesn't have to be 'create new categories' if there was a way for a user to organise it themselves. The way its now make it very difficult to find node and its also possible to pick other ones that have almost the same node name. Still I think mix of lowercase with capitalised names is not good approach.
I will add, it become an problem when 3th party developers define communication protocol as functions.
that is a different proposition... letting users re-organise their own palette is something totally different, that I'm not totally against, but would be a significant design effort.
then they should be encouraged to move them to something more appropriate via some polite feedback
@dceejay
There are some Nodes that do it very well in no specific order.
KNX Ultimate (8 nodes), Modbus (12 nodes), Telegram (10 nodes)... they all have there own
category and that is wonderful. But lets say we define all whose as protocol and use the Network category. In that situation I think it will only confuse people (or only me) when a category are filled with nodes in random order.
When a method are categories as input, or output it also become a separate entity. Its like a instance is more important and its class if you get what I mean.
I agree with you that the solution is not to have many categories.
There is more 4000 nodes and many have not been updated for many years. I will do my best to try to contact whose people (if its possible) for my concern.
Although I would like to be able to organise categories/nodes (by means of drag/drop/add/remove), it is not a big deal for me as i don't have many installed but can imagine it can become a burden.
Two things to note:
You can rearrange the category order via settings.js
You can search nodes in the little search box in the top, or cmd+click in the flow > search
