Thank you all for your feedback so far.
- I lost my workpace layouts !?! Why? I needed those, they worked for me and now I have to redo them.
I feel your pain. I have layouts I use all the time too. A number of new windows have been added, a few have been moved into internal views. All of this plays havoc with the layout mechanism and we felt that it was better to reset them than have it do a bad job loading an old one.
Your old layouts are still there. EA 12 is just looking in a different directory in appdata for them. If you want to try using your old layouts copy them from %appdata%\Sparx Systems\EA\Workspace Layouts to %appdata%\Sparx Systems\EA\Workspace Layouts12.
- BreadCrum/Navigation bar on top is nice. The "back/forward" arrows promise something much better, but unfortunately they don't deliver. Pressing the "back" button only selects the parent package in the project browser, not the previously opened diagram.
It doesn't do what I expected either. But I was expecting it to go back to the previous package. I think we'll see this toolbar improved over time.
- The properties dialogs. OMG Everything is different, and they have re-instated tabs, TABS EVERYWHERE!!! Anyone who had any documentation about EA can now start to rewrite (and copy/paste printscreens) because it all look very different now.
There are places in the UI that now have less tabs. The internal tabs that have been added previously corresponded to additional top level pages. In most cases when I use it, I hardly notice the internal tab control because everything I typically want is on the front page.
The most common exceptions to this are tagged values (on anything) or notes on operations. The notes on parameters aren't terribly convenient either, but in my experience they don't usually get a lot of documentation.
I was a little surprised when I opened a Diagram to see NO TOOLBOX!
I can see how that could be a problem. There is a button in the diagram caption bar to show or hide it, but that may not be visible enough. I think it's not in the default layouts because of that button and because so many views don't use it.
Well I like the new look and feel - but unless they have something up their sleeve - that's all we have here - a new look and feel.
There's a lot more than that mentioned on the download page, not too mention what the full release notes will describe.
Doesn't look too bad. But still the attributes/operations need to open in a separate window. Why can't these stay in the same properties window as that of the element itself? So the new style looks more like marketing driven rather than intended by practical use improvements.
So, you don't like that they are in a shared window, but you would like them to share the object properties dialog?
I can't deny that the visual styles don't necessarily provide usage improvements. But older versions of EA had an unusual mashup of themed and unthemed elements, even on the same dialog. I'm glad to see the updates if only because things aren't standing out at me for all the wrong reasons.
I can't seem to find where they hid the MDG Technologies option (where you can select/deselect which MDG's you want to use)
I've had the same issue. I just moved it under the extensions menu, which I think makes more sense. But I'll have to see if I can convince anyone else of that.
More comments in a second post so I don't go over the character limit.
