Hi Bogdan, It's great to see some attention paid to this. Usability is critical! My first suggestion is that you work with the users instead of the developers to find out what really needs to be fixed. Us developers are the ones responsible for the problems that are there! :-)
The two things on your list that appeal to me are the birds eye navigation view and the ability to mix and match elements more freely among diagram types. Having said that, I don't think you should underestimate the power of fixing things that seem small but are very annoying to the user and disrupt their "flow" when designing. To mind my way of thinking, this is more valuable than implementing a separate "sketching" or "beginner's" mode. Here are some examples from my personal list of pet peeves: - keyboard focus doesn't always go to the name field of newly created elements. The first thing I want to do when I create something is name it. - If I'm typing a name and click on a tool, I need to click twice - once to end the keyboard input and once to select the tool. The first mouse click should do both. - If I haven't used ArgoUML in a while, I alway try to drag the tool buttons onto the diagram. All tool buttons which create objects should support click/drag as a synonym for the current way of creating objects. - the key binding for diagram pan is different from most other programs so it remains undiscovered for many users (it took me over a year) - fixes might be to allow customization of the binding, changing the default binding, making pan mode more discoverable in some other way Of course the real list needs to come from user feedback (and they often don't know themselves, so the best thing to do is observe them). The key aspect to getting good usability is to develop a feedback loop with real users in actual use. Anything else is just guesswork (but obviously resource constraints come into play - not everyone has a usability lab with one way mirrors or a readily accessible pool of experimental guinea pigs). Tom --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
