JJ
I've just recently started working with MashZone and am makeing a demo for a client. While working on this I've come across quite a few simple things I miss in MashZone or simply can't find. Most of these are so basic that I'm supprised they are not there.
Here's my list (aka my wishlist):
Data Feeds:
- Regular expressions for find, replace, extract, ... These are so simple and powerfull for data manipulation that they are a must. I have circumvented their lack by using 10+ operators where one single replace regexp would have been enough. This also brings me to the next point:
- I miss the ability to group operations, show/hide groups, name groups, give groups a description. When a datafeeds become complex and cluttered it might be possible to understand whats going on right after they where first designed. But if you come back after a while has passed it will probably be very hard to know exactly what is beeing done where. Beeing able to group operators, give groups a name and a description (sort of like commenting code) would reduce the effort quite a bit. Beeing able to show and hide these groups would prevent complex datafeeds from becoming cluttered.
MashApp:
- If no item of a table is selected all linked filters have the option to also select nothing (currently it acts as if all items are selected). I have a series of tables which filter each other. Idealy I would like the second table to be empty untill something is selected in the first table, the third to be empty untill something was selected in the second and so on. But currently the seond one displays the items as if everything of the first table was selected...
- Option to prevent tables from colapsing entries with same content (especially if the hidden columns contains different elements). This is simple: I want the ability to show duplicates and not auto-colapse these duplicates....
- Table cel or row background colour dependant on cell's value. Here I mean text! Not only numbers. A "Failed" might want a little red traffic light next to it...
- Linebreaks within a table's cell... It is currently not possible to show a long text in a table. The option to toggle this on&off would be good.
- Textarea scrollbar. Textareas are not scrollable?! Please!
- Textarea text alignment top, middle, bottom. I only found the option to align left, center, right. Now for a multi-line text where I don't know how many lines it will be always having it float in the middle is really bad. Especially in combination with the missing scrollbars this is realy bad. If I have a text which might be one line, but might be 200 and put a long textarea in there to fit the max size of the text, the one line will be hanging in air way down on the page because its "middle" aligned.
- Textarea format (i.e. colour) according to value (both text and numbers!). Again, a very basic feature...
- Insert shapes. I would like the ability to draw things with simple shapes, lines and arrows. This way I could draw processes and fill their status from data feeds.
If any of these are there but I just haven't found them, please tell me!
In the current state with these basic things missing MashZone really isn't very impressive.
Hi,
thanks a lot for your extensive feedback. We will try to consider as much as possible for the future development of MashZone.
Please note, some of the things you mentioned are already possible:
- RegEx, was indeed useful, especially when it comes to composing URLs or SQL statements at runtime.
- What happens if nothing selected? For each filter you may set an option to describe how to handle missing comparison values, i.e. what happens if compared to nothing.
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- Prevent tables from collapsing entries... Actually, there is an aggregation strategy No which might help. However, each row still needs to be an unique combination. So you might insert a numerical column filled with ascending values?
- Shapes: Did you know that you can load shapes from any file name or URL? And this name might change based on user interaction. Please refer to the process MashApp Demo which ships with MashZone. In that demo, each process step is selectable. The state is represented by a shadow.
Regards
Stephan
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. Especially your comment regarding filters helped me a lot.
Concerning RegEx: I would like to use them in the "extract text" and "replace text" operators (or an equivalent that supports RegEx). This is not possible is it?
From what I see inserting a numerical column with ascending values in the data feed will not help unless it is made a visible column in the table?
As for the shapes. Yes, of cause you can add shapes as images. But beeing able to draw a simple shape somewhere and adjust colour, border and shadow would make designing the MashApp much easier than starting up the GFX software (incase you even have somthing other than paint installed on your pc), create the shape, save and upload it and then type in the URL. And if you decide you need a slighty other colour or need it 5px wider (without it starting to look ugly because you are streching it) you have to do all that over again... And one year later when you no longer have the source file of the image but want to change one you will have to redraw all images or live with haveing one with a slightly other style than the others... or you want to connect two things with a nice line or arrow (curvy just like the connectors in the data feed (you already have the code to generate them...) or an elbowed connectors). Try drawing those correctly in the GFX software... and then decide you have to move the shapes slightly or totally change the layout as a new shape has to be added... I think you get my point. ;)
Regards
Jonas
