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The main difference is the ribbon menu. I am not a fan of ribbon
menus, but I am learning to like them a bit. The idea that
everything is visible is nice, and the icons are useful. The fact
that they cannot be customised is a pain in my view. I would like
to be able to add my own ribbon pane, at the very least, for my
own frequent command. The toolbar is too small and far away to
be too useful. This is not aimed at the Metastorm BPM Designer
per se, but at the format in general. My greatest difficulty is
learning where everything is all over again. Since so much has
changed, that is not an overriding factor in this case.
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The Home menu shows firstly all the components you can add to
a Project. It does not show Project or Libraries, these are added
from the main menu.
The tooltip provides more information, as with all the menu items:
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This list can be expanded like so to provide a more detailed
description:
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There is also a context
menu on the Solution
Explorer, although we did
notice that it does not
change depending on
what is selected. This can
cause confusion as the
inserted component may
not end up where you
expect if you have not
selected a suitable container.
Both this and the above
menu also regard the
component open in the
main window as the
selected component, not
what is selected in the
Solution Explorer. This
can cause confusion too if
you have the default of
double-clicking to select
the component set.
The remaining menu items
are fairly standard toggle
buttons and a few
dropdowns. We shall
discuss each as we use
the related components.
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The Design menu has items for setting fonts and colours, as well
as the styles in the Process Map. It also has the Tab Order toggle
for Forms.
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The Layout menu is the richest, and probably the most time-
saving feature. You can see all the various option, all clearly laid
out in our opinion. Never again will I get all my stages and Action
clumped together because I can never tell the difference
between vertical and horizontal alignment!
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The View manu mainly toggles the various panes, and it also
opens the few remaining dialogs such as translations.
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When you get to various places in the Solution you will edit items
in a Grid. When this happens you get a Grid Tools menu. We
have noticed this is not always selected automatically, however.
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Likewise, when you select a Report, there is a Reporting Tools
menu.
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The Scripting Editor has a very interesting toolbar. This promises
to be very useful. More about that when we look at Scripting.
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From the Main menu
you can open the
most recent files.
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You can ‘pin’ any of
these to the list to
create a favourites
list, as well.
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The ‘New’ menu offers a new
Project or Library. These are
added to the current
Solution. The only way to
create a new Solution is to
close you file and add a
Project or Solution.
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The only other submenu is
‘Export’. This allows you to
export components as
components, images or
even as Templates (for
Forms).
The Import allows you to
import Packages, but we
are not sure what they are
or how they are created
as yet. We assume they
will be implemented in
the full release.
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There is also a single toolbar,
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With the standard
single option to
display it below the
ribbon.
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In the Options you can
customise this toolbar
by adding all your frequently
used commands.
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As I usually find, I would like to be able to choose large icons,
but this is not possible.
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As is also standard,
pressing Alt or F10
will show the
shortcut keys from
there to access
each item. This is a
nice feature, especially on a
laptop with no
mouse, I find.
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1. Designer User Interface
