Monthly Poll 201709_10
Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:30 pm
We haven't had a poll for a while so I thought I'd indulge myself to answer a question that I've been flip-flopping on.
A new version of the TM1Tools add-in is in the pipeline. Maybe not as fast as many would like, but I'm not getting paid for this, so... It will include 64 bit support plus a few new features. The latter point is the more important one (for the purposes of this poll) since it means that there will be about 15 to 20 commands, up from the current dozen plus the options button.
The question is whether to leave the interface as it is so that it just shows up as legacy buttons on the AddIns tab, or whether it's time to create a ribbon tab for it. The process for the latter is slightly uglier than the current legacy process, where the menus can be coded entirely within VBA. For practical purposes you can't do that with a ribbon. (Well, you can, but the complexity doesn't bear thinking about so it's easier to just create the XML code separately.) So the question is, would you like to see TM1 Tools with a ribbon or not? The way I've phrased the question also serves as poll on the versions of Excel in use for the sake of curiosity. (There is a slight difference in the way you have to do it for the abomination which was 2007 vs later versions, so I particularly want to see how many are stuck with that steaming pile of organic by-product.)
One of the main reasons I've been reluctant to is because of the problems that exist with the TM1 ribbon. Trust me when I tell you that you do NOT want to try stepping through code in debug mode while that thing is active, and of course most of us have probably experienced the "buttons with no name" phenomenon. (Though I suspect that that has something to do with the TM1 ribbon being dynamic and redrawing itself according to context; I would have no intention of doing that.)
A new version of the TM1Tools add-in is in the pipeline. Maybe not as fast as many would like, but I'm not getting paid for this, so... It will include 64 bit support plus a few new features. The latter point is the more important one (for the purposes of this poll) since it means that there will be about 15 to 20 commands, up from the current dozen plus the options button.
The question is whether to leave the interface as it is so that it just shows up as legacy buttons on the AddIns tab, or whether it's time to create a ribbon tab for it. The process for the latter is slightly uglier than the current legacy process, where the menus can be coded entirely within VBA. For practical purposes you can't do that with a ribbon. (Well, you can, but the complexity doesn't bear thinking about so it's easier to just create the XML code separately.) So the question is, would you like to see TM1 Tools with a ribbon or not? The way I've phrased the question also serves as poll on the versions of Excel in use for the sake of curiosity. (There is a slight difference in the way you have to do it for the abomination which was 2007 vs later versions, so I particularly want to see how many are stuck with that steaming pile of organic by-product.)
One of the main reasons I've been reluctant to is because of the problems that exist with the TM1 ribbon. Trust me when I tell you that you do NOT want to try stepping through code in debug mode while that thing is active, and of course most of us have probably experienced the "buttons with no name" phenomenon. (Though I suspect that that has something to do with the TM1 ribbon being dynamic and redrawing itself according to context; I would have no intention of doing that.)