"Comparison Projects..." button & dialog

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  The list is a 'recently used' list which is limited to the last six used projects. To open other projects, the "Open location from disk" option can be used or simply select File/Open Project.
  
  Is six too many or too few?
  
  What is it about the dialog box that you preferred over the dropdown?
  
  David Atkinson
  Red Gate Software

  David Atkinson January 12, 2009 14:32

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  Six is not enough.
  
  The "open location from disk" is cumbersome (see below)
  
  The "File|Recent" is ugly because they are all in the same format:
  
  \Documents and Settings\abertrand\My Documents\SQL Compare\Projects\192 168 3 202 dbname v 192 168 5 205 dbname dd-mm-yyyy.hh-nn-ss.msms.SCP
  
  It is very hard to tell these apart visually. And if I need a project that is not in the most recent 6 (I have about 30 right now), I have to browse for it.
  
  The dialog was better because it had ALL of my projects. This was very handy. Scrolling, and identifying a project visually, is much easier and more fun than navigating through a file browse dialog and then visually parsing these cryptic SCP file names.

  AaronBertrand January 12, 2009 14:38

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  Can you post a list of features that were changed or removed, and where applicable, explain why? For some of these features I am more than happy to change the way I work if I understand the reason. In this specific case, the dialog worked fine, and I am curious why it was felt it needed to be removed / replaced.

  AaronBertrand January 12, 2009 14:40

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  AaronBertrand wrote:

  Six is not enough.
  
  The "open location from disk" is cumbersome (see below)
  
  The "File|Recent" is ugly because they are all in the same format:
  
  \Documents and Settings\abertrand\My Documents\SQL Compare\Projects\192 168 3 202 dbname v 192 168 5 205 dbname dd-mm-yyyy.hh-nn-ss.msms.SCP
  
  It is very hard to tell these apart visually. And if I need a project that is not in the most recent 6 (I have about 30 right now), I have to browse for it.
  
  The dialog was better because it had ALL of my projects. This was very handy. Scrolling, and identifying a project visually, is much easier and more fun than navigating through a file browse dialog and then visually parsing these cryptic SCP file names.

  
  Thanks for this feedback. I'd like to encourage other beta testers to also give us their opinions on this new dropdown.
  
  You say they're hard to tell apart visually, but they are roughly in the same format than in the previous Comparison Projects dialog, so what would be the ideal way for you to correctly distinguish projects so you can select the right one. The file names are just suggestions. If you 'Save As' you can create your own.
  
  David Atkinson
  Red Gate Software

  David Atkinson January 12, 2009 18:50

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  I meant the file menu item, not the larger dropdown.
  
  Sure, if I save as I can create my own. And that's great if I'm a first-time user or if I'm adding a bunch of new projects. When I am upgrading and I have 30 or 40, none of which I had ever seen a name for before this version, it's less useful, because they're already named with these log and non-visual names. The first 6 look fine but then if I am browsing for it I have to parse these big long names.

  AaronBertrand January 12, 2009 19:55

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  How did you previously identify your projects? What is it that our new dropdown doesn't have that helps you better identify your projects?
  
  In terms of generating a name automatically for projects, what would be better that we currently do?
  
  Thanks,
  
  David Atkinson
  Red Gate Software

  David Atkinson January 13, 2009 04:29

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  The information in the drop-down is fine, but it needs to hold more than 6 projects. It should scroll if there are more than 6 - just like any other drop-down does.
  
  Perhaps you could put an option for "Number of items to show in Recent Items list" on the Tools... Options... menu and default it to 6.
  
  Personally, I don't forsee me ever opening a project by file name. I suppose knowing the file name would be good if you needed to share the file with someone else, but the presentation of information in the drop-down list is FAR superior to anything you could ever do with a filename.

  Scott Roberts January 13, 2009 10:32

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  The new dropdown isn't missing anything, except that it only holds 6 projects. I should be able to access all my projects there.
  
  The menu entry under File is much less useful to me. I'd like to stay with the visual identification and not have to know or care what you're calling the SCP file names behind the scenes.
  
  So in other words, keep the drop down, but make it hold all of my projects instead of 6. This would most closely mimic the behavior of the old project dialog from version <= 7. If you can fix that I don't think you will have to invest any time into making file names easier to identify, coming up with better defaults, etc.

  AaronBertrand January 13, 2009 10:39

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  Another option would be to have the open list act more like a favorites/bookmarks list from your web browser of choice. I have some projects that I rarely use and some that I use nearly daily.
  
  Under version 7 those daily used projects naturally floated up to the top but could be fun to track down if I used one of my rarely used projects and the list order changed from what I'm used to on a day to day basis.
  
  A fixed list would be preferable for my usage with the option to open other projects as needed.

  brian.merz January 13, 2009 11:00

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  >> A fixed list would be preferable for my usage with the option to open other projects as needed.
  
  I could work with that if opening other projects was also visual. I really don't want to change my way of thinking to force myself to either name all of my projects or remember what SQL Compare decided to name them. Visually parsing those long names is quite tedious, and I really think they got the visual representation in the 7.0 dialog (and the new dropdown) right. It just needs an easier way to get at more than 6 projects that way.

  AaronBertrand January 13, 2009 11:04

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  I can definitely agree neither wanting to manually name projects nor parse the long file names.
  
  Perhaps a fixed "bookmark" list with the 7.0 dialog as the "bookmark" manager?

  brian.merz January 13, 2009 15:00

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  I must admit I preferred the version 7 approach to listing projects as well. I've over 40 different databases; hence over 40 different comparison projects -- and that's if I have only one per database. The version 7 comparison projects dialog was visually rich, and also supported filtering. Moreover, when opening a project via Open From Location on Disk with the beta, you must navigate to the correct folder every time -- it doesn't maintain the path. Also, it seems that if you switch to another application and then back to the beta, the Open dialog box doesn't return to the foreground.
  
  EDIT -- I want to also add that with the previous approach I generally only needed to store a single project for a given database. I could compare numerous instances of said database across many environments by changing the source and target servers configured for that project. I could easily identify the database I needed from the project dialog regardless of the servers involved. This is proving difficult with the beta.
  
  EDIT -- I'm trying SaveAs to create project names that exclude servers.

  SQLGuru January 16, 2009 15:45

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