John,
that's exactly what was there before: a Button that said "Class" when you were on the Instance side and vice versa. It was hard to understand because you always had to think about hat exactly it means. Does it mean I am looking at Class methods or does it mean I can use it to switch to Class methods. So it's not really a good replacement.
I think it would be best if it were notebook pages, but then there's the question where to put the public/private/all selection options. Me personally thinks that this should simply go away. Private methods are just some kind of label attached to a method and the word private has a completely different meaning in most other languages. Many Smalltalk environments have dropped private methods or never supported them. One of the first settings I change in my images is to have browsers display all. If VA ST really needs private methods, make it a less prominent GUI element (e.g. some drop down menu) and stick with the red indicators for private methods. Or introduce the notion of private in the form of a special category (hmmm.. not sure I really like this...)
There are probably less expensive alternatives:
* Use a drop down-list instead of Radio Buttons (By far not my favorite)
* Make the switcher so that it displays in two lines if both selections don't fit into one line (introducing new problems or small browser windows)
* Make Browser windows always open big enough for the switcher to be visible (cheapest but least sustainable because users can always make the winow smaller)
* Move the clas/instance switcher to the top (above categories and the method list). It probably even belongs there because the list of categories is different between class and instance side, so it switches both the contents of category and method list
* Then it could possibly even be a notebook that includes both categories list and methods list, both in the context of either class or instanece
---> That's my favorite. Thinking about it even more, the selection between private and public (if it's really needed) is something that is relevent in the context of either class or instance methods.
To summarize: Put the categories and method list into a combined notebook/tab strip for the selection between class and instance side. Then, if really needed, the public/private/all selection can be made wihin the respective page/tab.
Joachim