I have been a Web Applications Developer and Web UX Architect/Designer for 20+ years. Last year, I started working with ThingWorx 8.3.3. It was quite a paradigm shift for me, but I felt that the composer was a great tool; very legible, easy to understand and use, etc. Yes, it needed improvements. But it was still a great product! And then we upgraded to 8.5.4. And it was HORRIBLE! But then I was given hope.
I was super pumped when I heard we were going to upgrade to TWX 9.0. I had been pushing for it since I heard it was coming out. We finally upgraded from 8.5.4 YESTERDAY (August 05, 2020)! I just knew you had fixed all of the super annoying stuff that you inserted in version 8.5.4, and that it would take up less screen space (less scrolling, easier to read), widgets were all fixed, the nag screens would be gone and placed in a user preference. But instead, it is just more of the same, with only slight usability improvements, not the sweeping improvements I was led to believe were coming. I have immediately run into several things which are making me extremely frustrated. Here is just a very small sampling of frustrating things:
1. Obsolete bindings for "....<Function Name>...." were removed.
I have found several now so far, and this has rendered my applications completely non-functional. It appears that only the new (standard) Navigation functions are affected. My legacy navigators are still completely functional and untouched. What was the criteria for making these bindings obsolete? I can find nothing in your documentation about this unexpected development. The removed bindings passed IDs from the calling mashup, via a Navigator function, to the next mashup. The same ID is being passed to other widgets and have not been touched. So WHY are they being removed from my Navigators??? If I try to restore the bindings from the Navigator to my Javascript service via the new tool in the function window (I DO like that feature), and save the mashup, the binding gets removed again. BUT, if I bind the ID field by going from my JavaScript service TO the navigator, it works and I can save it. But the bound mashup inside the navigator won't recognize the passed values and fails when viewing the mashup in the browser. This makes absolutely no sense at all.
2. Getting the following notice on some of my mashups: "This mashup contains widgets that have been automatically updated. Click Save to accept updates."
It would be very nice to know WHICH WIDGETS were updated, WHY they were updated, and exactly WHAT the updates were. I don't want to save them until I know what you did to my application without my permission or approval. It would have been even MUCH better if you would throw up something that says "YOU HAVE THE FOLLOWING WIDGETS THAT REQUIRE THE FOLLOWING CHANGES:"...and list them. No other development tool or IDE I have used in 25+ years has ever changed my code for me without telling me about it BEFORE doing it so I can take the proper steps. It would have been very nice if you would have, at the bare minimum, included some kind of warnings that this was going to happen in your documentation. I guess that's a bridge too far? And I just discovered that if I click "View Mashup", it saves the changes anyway. So I just got screwed.
3. THE NAGWARE IS STILL THERE - I was told ON THE PHONE it would go away!
Nagware makes me see red. I get it. You want us to move to the new standard widgets. And we will. We CAN'T right now, for many reasons. I have been seeing this nonsensical warning every day all year. I KNOW it contains deprecated widgets. I am NOT stupid! My wife doesn't even nag at me as much as you do with this! Put something in the preferences to turn the warning ON or OFF. You have the offending widgets flagged in the explorer window...that's good enough.
4. Connecting lines between widgets
They used to be a DIFFERENT color when you moused over them (green). Now they are the same color (blue) but only bolded a bit. Super difficult to see that, especially when you have a whole bunch of them grouped together. Please put it back to a different color (give users a preference so they can choose a color that they can see. That way you don't have to worry about pleasing color-blind and vision-impaired people). What would REALLY be nice is if you could CLICK on a line and it STAYS highlighted so you can trace it up or down from source to target.
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* An idea that was WAY overdue...I like that you finally included UNDO/REDO...an improvement would be to provide keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-Z / CTRL-SHIFT-Z is pretty standard for web developers). Also, you should give users the ability to say how many history items they want. 10 items is not always enough. (Haven't you ever used Microsoft Word? You have more than 10 history items there.) I understand the need to minimize it, but it can be better. The user preferences section would be a great place to provide this option.
* Make the boxes SMALLER like they were in 8.3.3 so I can see my widgets without having to scroll for eternity to find something. You made them bigger in 8.5.4. And you made them even bigger still in 9.0. Why? I'm not blind.
* There are some more subtle changes that I like...I've only been using this for about 12 hours, so I haven't found everything. I gave 8.3.3 an A+; but so far, I can only give 9.0's Composer a weak grade of C Minus.
