RANT: FM 9.0 -

Bill Swallow techcommdood at gmail.com
Tue Aug 3 07:27:19 PDT 2010


> Can these behavior be changed. I do not want dialogs to be persistent. I do
> not want the "Not Applicable" element as the first in any selectable list.

I don't know. You may need to take some time to wade through maker.ini
and see if there's anything in there that can be changed.

> IMHO, the changes made in FM9 are just eye-candy and do not add anything to
> the whole experience of working with Frame Maker. In fact, I find it a bit
> of a chore to use it.

I agree with this. Jumping into FM9 after having used FM for roughly
12 years was a bit of a surprise. While I didn't have time to poke
through every feature, I had difficulty wrapping my head around the UI
for conditional text (I'm still fuzzy on the order in which selections
need to be made in the UI in order for things to "stick"). Granted I
was in the "UI changes are not necessary" camp from the beginning -
because the tool worked very well, as ugly as it may have been - but I
think too much time was spent upgrading the UI and not enough time was
spent use testing with veteran users.

Just as with the MS Office ribbon, one should not have to completely
relearn how to use software after a UI update. The same logic,
keyboard shortcuts, and expected behavior should be maintained.

-- 
Bill Swallow

Twitter: @techcommdood
Blog: http://techcommdood.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/techcommdood



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