SigmaPlot version 12.5 is scheduled for release in March 2013. It is a free upgrade and it will be significantly different from the version you have now. Here are some reasons as to why it is different and what we are doing to not only improve the present version but to improve it beyond the Version 11 design that our customers seem to prefer.
We included the tree-structure Property Browser because we simply could not add features to the old Graph Properties panel. Because of the way the Graph Wizard was designed, a change in one panel required changes in all panels which made it increasingly difficult to do anything with the user interface.
So the present tree structure was used to allow continuous feature expansion — which it does. Unfortunately it has made the user interface difficult to use. The existence of the tree took up window real estate and it was easy to get lost in its multiple levels as you might have noticed. In the next release, Version 12.5, the tree structure will be used in the background to allow expansion but, with one exception, it won´t be visible.
The lost real estate will be regained and you won´t get lost in the multiple tree levels. We have an early version of this running and users are really going to like this new design. And this release will be available to you at no additional cost.
The new Graph Properties is shown below. It is very much like the UI that you are used to in Version 11 except far better:
1. It is a combination of the object tree and properties approach in V12 and the Graph Properties layout of V11.
- a. object tree on the left in figure below
- b. properties on the right in figure below (they look just like the Graph Properties in V11)
2. The object tree is only two levels and the two levels are fixed and never disappear. Also the tree length is fixed in length. This
- a) avoids getting lost in multiple levels of the tree and
- b) avoids getting lost in an "infinitely" long tree.
3. There aren´t any Graph Properties tabs like the Plot, Axis and Graph tabs in V11 — you don´t have to select a tab, everything is visible at once.
4. You click on a property and the graph changes instantaneously (V12 feature).
5. If the panel above covers part of the graph you can move the mouse cursor off the panel and the panel becomes partially transparent so that you can see the result through the panel (there will be an option to turn this off).
Let´s explore how this will work. Say you want to modify an axis property; in the figure above, you would click on the left side to select an object , then click on the right to change a property, perhaps then move the cursor off the panel to see what happened behind the panel with the property change, then make other changes by clicking on the left and clicking on the right, etc. Tab clicking is not required just as it is in Version 11, so now it´s all there right in front of you.