Support for High Resolution Screens UHD not working well & Smaller UI suggestions

Hi,

Please support higher resolution screens i.e. QHD and UHD laptops which are mainstream now. On opening a model on my Lenovo Y50 UHD 3180*2160 mode the model is super zoomed in compared to opening the same model on a FHD 1920x1080, even doing so renders all the little corner circles and squares as giants practically making it not usable, I had to switch the resolution every time I use Toad modeler to be productive.

Some suggested UI Tweaks:

  1. On dragging to select items, unless the object is not full captured within the dragged area don’t select it, this is much more practical that just touching an unwanted object by a pixel and it still gets selected.

  2. Please please please pretty please :slight_smile: Have a way to create a table by simply tabbing with the keyboard, selecting a data type, then a size …etc. currently I can either have the popup and keep adding but without types, or if I tab to change the type I have to make a long mouse press or press F2 to get to the drop down. I think how easy to define a new entity with minimal number of clicks / buttons is a primary measure of how easy and intuitive your product can be…

  3. Is there any way to copy and paste column definitions from one entity to the other?

  4. How can I get the datatypes to be ALL CAPS for MySQL or others i.e. INT or VARCHAR …etc. currently they for first letter capitalization which is a non-typical naming convention.

  5. When auto re-sizing is enabled, there is no padding at and sometimes entity is too small truncating the data type …etc. please add some vertial and horizontal padding, a few pixels will do…

  6. Can there be a simple Check for Updates and then download and install feature from within the App?

Thank you…

Hi,

thank you for your feedback. We will test TDM on various screen resulutions on newer types of monitors. Thanks for reporting it. Re UI tweaks:

  1. There are two possibilities how to select objects using your mouse. If you start in top left corner, then you have to select whole objects to be included in the selection. If you start in bottom right corner, then just a few pixels of an object are enough for inclusion of the object. In similar way graphical software works.

  2. Good suggestion. There is a reason why we haven’t added this functionality to the software yet. Whenever you changed the position, object will automatically switch to EDIT mode and can “lock” the item in other places in UI etc… But we will reopen the discussion and try to make improvements. In the meantime, please use the OK+Add button for adding new table columns. That should be faster then pressing F2 key in the grid. .

  3. Yes. You can drag items from Model Explorer to another entity in model explorer, or to another entity in ERD:

copy-1.png

Or you can copy/move items in ERD directly. (Press CTRL key for making columns selection)

copy-2.png

You can also use Gallery where table columns can be stored and drag the item from the Gallery to new model objetcs.

  1. Open the SQL Code Generation form by pressing F9 and on tab Detail Settings change the Text Case Selection value to Uppercase. Then generate the SQL code. Settings will then be applied to SQL Preview as well.

  2. Padding will appear in version 5.4, together with new UI improvement: indicator of additional table columns that are not visible in Entity graphics:

padding.png

  1. There is automatic check for updates. Make sure it is enabled:

check-for-updates.png

Thanks again for your feedback!

Vaclav

Hi Vaclav,

Thank you so much for reading my comments and your detailed answers, this is the best thing about this forum, feedback is taken seriously and we’re often pleasantly surprise by useful existing features, or learning you already thought about a suggestion and it’s on the way :). Quick comments:

  1. Very neat! Now I wonder why other apps didn’t implement such pattern :slight_smile: Solved++

  2. Thanks for the details, but I strongly believe it’s worth a fresh thought, may be another ‘Express Table Wizard’ with only minimal important field i.e. forget about Caption& Name just 1 field and keep it in sync, then tabbed fields support type ahead with drop downs, skipping all rarely used fields i.e. (Name, Type, [P1], [P2], Primay, Not Null) no domain, comments, caption, …etc. and have primary at the end after you name the column, not null after it as it will default to not null if primary …etc. tabbing starts a new line, pressing enter seals the deal and creates the table. that can be at least for new tables, then use the other editors grid or form pop-up to enforce your states …etc. That’s would be an exquisite gift !

  3. Great to know, Solved.

  4. Close :)… Typically like in preserve case ‘Statements’ are in all CAPS like CREATE TABLE, etc. but datatype are in the very unusual / odd convention of first letter capitalized. When you set ALL CAPS it turns the types to ALL CAPS but it also turns my column names. We would like the option to preserve the case for names but recommend for consistency datatypes to be ALL CAPS as well similar to STATEMENTS. Event when they show in ER model, we’d like to show in all caps, small and rarely first cap from what I’ve seen.

  5. Great that this is coming and nice as well to indicate missing rows. Since you said that, to maximize model readability I try to avoid redundancy i.e. hide PK, FK and NN in favor of the colored icons, you did a great job with red, green and blue and light grey for not null, almost all info presented. The only missing permutation is a Allow Null Foreign Key, I suggest you leverage Bold for All Keys, and if FK which Allows Nulls make it regular (not bold) using the same color, this way all information visually presented while space is slashed by 3 columns.

  6. Good to know, Solved.

Hi,

thanks. I must say that this community is a great source of information not only for you, but also for us - the dev team. To your comments:

  1. We know that adding new attributes should be as easy and as fast as possible. Will discuss it again. Thanks for sending us detailed specification of what you would like to see in the product. Chagne request TDM-1224 created.

  2. Understood. We have a really good technology for formatting SQL at our disposal and I think this improvement can be added to the product relatively easily. TDM-1225

  3. Unfortunately we can use just one font (+font size +font style) for all items in the graphics. But I created new change request and we will see if that would be possible. TDM-1226

Thanks again,

Vaclav