Tuesday, August 21, 2012

NextReports: Simplify Perspectives

NextReports Designer uses a concept called "perspectives".  Any report or chart can be seen from two perspectives : query (sql) and layout.

Because NextReports has two types of layout entities (charts & reports), designer main toolbar contains three perspective actions:
  • Query Perspective
  • Report Perspective
  • Chart Perspective
Report and Chart Perspectives cannot be enabled at the same time, so a nice improvement can be done here.

In the new 5.3 release only two perspective actions will be shown, making user interface more concise:
  • Query Perspective
  • Layout Perspective

Practically, "Layout Perspective" will show a report layout or a chart layout . "Layout Perspective" action will be disabled when just a query is loaded and enabled when a report or a chart is loaded.

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