Property panels

[chris]

Hello all,

first, thanks for ArgoUML, it's a great piece of work.
I want to give some feedback on the (new) property panels. These are ideas from someone who is just a user of ArgoUML. I know that things are sometimes more complicated from a developer point of view.

First of all, it's an improvement to be able to open/close the small compartments for related model elements (e.g. attributes/operations in the class property panel). The problem in the property panels, especially for the class properties, is always limited space. I have thought about this and had an idea how to arrange the things in the property panel slightly different to better use the available space. Attached is sketch I've made. On the top you see the layout sketch, on the bottom the current panel.

You see that, in the sketch, almost all room is taken by the compartments, while in the current property panels the labels consume a lot of space and there are large empty areas.

The little colored squares would be the toolbar icons (of course in reality with real symbols). The yellow icons would be the symbol for creating the respective element (creating a new attribute/Operation/association). You see that the "create" symbols are always visible, which makes less clicks for the user because he doesn't always have to open the compartments to see the compartment toolbar. In this context perhaps a generic "create" symbol would be useful (similar to the common "create new document" symbol often used in applications). This would save users and developers from using a lot of different symbols.

Next, the usability could be greatly enhanced if the panels would remember which compartments are opened. So for example, you can visit each parameter of an operation without having to open the parameter compartment each time.

Finally, I found the navigation capabilities of the old property panels extremely useful (symbols for going "up", "next" and "previous", like in Windows Explorer. This is very useful for example to traverse through the list of operations in a class, to make changes to each of them. It would be great to have a generic navigation facility:

- for a class:
up -> go to namespace
next -> next class in the namespace
previous -> previous class in the namespace

- for an attribute:
up -> go to the containing element, i.e. the class
next -> next attribute in the class
previous -> previous attribute in the class

and so on for all model elements.

Regards,
Chris

[ThomasNeustupny]

Hi Chris,

wow, thanks a lot for your fantastic feedback! It's worth being forwarded to all developers of ArgoUML, which I'll take care of.

[bobster]

Yes, good feedback.

The work on introducing the new property panels came from one of our GSOC students but the expand/collapse of the individual components came from myself.

I had considered keep knowledge of what the user has opened/closed and leaving them in that state by default on next visit. There was simply no time for this before the release was due.

We are also in fix mode at the moment as some functionality has been lost in the new implementation that we must get back in and released as soon as possible. We're fighting to get these fixed and out http://argouml.tigris.org/issues/buglis ... one=0.30.1

As these missing features could give users problems we must do that before worrying about any new features.

As far as layout is concerned there will always be differences of opinion for width vs height. I think I actually agree with your suggestion but would maybe introduce a different layout as an option and let the user choose rather than decide one way or the other.

Regards

Bob.

[bobster]

We have reacted quickly to feedback reqgarding the new panels. Please try the latest beta release to see if it resolves your problems - http://argouml-downloads.tigris.org/arg ... .1.BETA_1/

I haven't adjusted according to your layout but I have made sure that all controls previously available can be found now and that the expanded list component remain expanded