0.48

Released November 11., 2008

This release is full of steps toward release 1.0, the user interface has been thoroughly unified and optimised for ease of use.

Persistent panels

In release 0.47 projects started remembering where you left them, the currently opened files, whether particular procedures where expanded or not, which breakpoints has been set, etc.

In this release we expand this support to also remember which panels where open the last time you worked on it.

This makes it easier to pick up your work where you left it, for instance, if you were debugging a problem where the modbus panels and stream sniffer panels where helpful, they will be there for you to use the next time the project is opened.

Icons everywhere

This release has seen a lot of new icons added to almost every data-type in SeqZap. As a user it is sometimes hard to remember exactly, for example, which tab page in the procedure setup dialogue is the one for editing partners. Reading the headers of all tab-pages is time-consuming and usually your brain "tricks" you, and you end up clicking on the parameters tab rather than the partners tab.

We have seen a rapid decline in users clicking the wrong tab by introducing icons to the tabs, by having distinct icons for each tab page it is much easier for the brain to recognise the correct one to click.

Other user interface improvements

More user interface elements has been updated in this release than we can mention here, but some of the things we haven't mentioned yet is:

Workbench tools

Workbench tools now show when you have changed something on them which require them to be setup again.

Execution log

The execution log was updated to also include the wall time, or real-world time if you will, this makes it much easier to relate the events in the log to other instruments you have monitoring the system under test. It also makes it much easier to get view of exactly when a particular event occurred when running a test which takes several hours to complete, something quite common when testing systems.

We now also log the parameters that are used when calling a procedure or a ZapTool. Besides being nice to have, it also saves you the trouble of manually logging the values of the parameters you want to monitor.

Panels

When having many panels opened which use the same tool, or when using panels while the tool is being used during an execution, the tool is perhaps not available for use by a panel at a particular moment. In previous version we visualised this by colouring the polling indicator yellow, now we also show when the panel was last successfully updated.

Errors and Warnings view

When using the automatic error fixing feature of SeqZap it is very common that a fix that might be applicable to one error is also applicable to several other areas, previously you would execute each fix manually, but now related fixes can be executed at the same time.

Just how useful this is becomes apparent when adding/removing a parameter on a procedure, which results in all the calls to that particular procedure to be invalid. You can now just select all the procedure calls in the error list, and select "Synchronize Count".

The errors and warnings view has also received a makeover such that it is now possible to get a quick total of the number of errors, warnings and information messages is in the list, and also to see when the parser is running, and how the result was.

Bugfixes/improvements

#66	Disable menu items based on the state of the application
#77	Default / initial view docking on new installation should be "recommended setup"
#377	Moving more than one step when one of the steps is the last or first step in procedure needs re-thinking
#423	Some help for correcting procedure calls when parameter list on procedure changes
#425	Make new more quietly colored icon for TimeGate - and smaller
#464	Copy/Cut hidden steps under a collapsed step (Test Step or scope creator)
#492	Log parameters for procedure calls and ZapTool invocation.
#493	A ProcedureModel cannot be pasted into script file
#520	Improve EnterStep information in log.
#521	Adding a pre-condition to a procedure does not add namespace