Re: Attention Desktop Developers
I haven't read all the posts but I get really worried when I keep seeing the word "replace"! NO! NO! NO!
Alpha has generally been pretty good about keeping things backward compatible but every so often they've come up with, or read about, a "better idea" and ended up replacing one feature with another. The new feature is often good but REPLACING the old feature was a bad idea. I'm all for new OPTIONS but don't go around replacing forms with something new or changing the way something works. (1) I don't want to re-write all my existing apps because, for example, today's forms are no longer supported and (2) many lesser "features" can be improved by adding new options but the current option should not be eliminated.
Examples:
1. Somebody convinced Alpha to change field lists from "natural order" to "alphabetic order". They did that and I hated it. My fields are often "grouped" (address info all together but not alphabetic) or it's fairly common to want to work with the last field(s) added - but not remember the name of the last field(s) and that makes it difficult when working with an alphabetic list. There were enough complaints to get them to make that choice optional on some of those lists but even today there are still some that are natural order only and some that are alphabetic order only. (I'd still like to see all of them as optional.)
2. Alpha came up with the ability to move the pop-up calendar and RTF edit button outside the field. That's a nice option BUT it wasn't optional at first and my forms were pretty tight thus causing those buttons to show over top of some other field. This was awkward for users and made the forms look very unprofessional. Thankfully they gave us a way to change that back to the old method.
I'm absolutely postive there are other examples but can't think of them right now.
I haven't read all the posts but I get really worried when I keep seeing the word "replace"! NO! NO! NO!
Alpha has generally been pretty good about keeping things backward compatible but every so often they've come up with, or read about, a "better idea" and ended up replacing one feature with another. The new feature is often good but REPLACING the old feature was a bad idea. I'm all for new OPTIONS but don't go around replacing forms with something new or changing the way something works. (1) I don't want to re-write all my existing apps because, for example, today's forms are no longer supported and (2) many lesser "features" can be improved by adding new options but the current option should not be eliminated.
Examples:
1. Somebody convinced Alpha to change field lists from "natural order" to "alphabetic order". They did that and I hated it. My fields are often "grouped" (address info all together but not alphabetic) or it's fairly common to want to work with the last field(s) added - but not remember the name of the last field(s) and that makes it difficult when working with an alphabetic list. There were enough complaints to get them to make that choice optional on some of those lists but even today there are still some that are natural order only and some that are alphabetic order only. (I'd still like to see all of them as optional.)
2. Alpha came up with the ability to move the pop-up calendar and RTF edit button outside the field. That's a nice option BUT it wasn't optional at first and my forms were pretty tight thus causing those buttons to show over top of some other field. This was awkward for users and made the forms look very unprofessional. Thankfully they gave us a way to change that back to the old method.
I'm absolutely postive there are other examples but can't think of them right now.
Comment