Experiences with release 2012b

Did you try 2012b already? What do you like, what has still potential for further improvements, what makes working with Matlab harder than with earlier releases?

How large is the overlap between the new features and the list of wished changes: Answers: what-is-missing-from-matlab?

[Andreas Goser]

Jan's question is about the whole release, certainly with a spin on MATLAB. Do we have Simulink users aroundd here? Or maybe one wants to open a seperate thread?

[Jan]

I'd prefer some hopefully positive feedback about the new Simulink features in this thread as counter part to the negative opinions about the ribbons and the new style of the documentation.

[Doug Hull]

EDITOR NOTE: In the interest of putting comments in the right place (answers to the question where they can be voted on) I moved some of the comments (positive and negative) into the answers section, just like I do for other questions.

[Jan]

@Wesley: Please post this as an answer, not as a comment. While I can reconsider all of your impressions and emotions, I do not agree with the last sentencs: I have an old incredibly stable QNX, which boots from a floppy disk. Here the obvious bottleneck is the hardware, to be exact the floppy disk support and stability.

I have not heard of any other Matlab release which cause so much detest.

[Scott Bressler]

I miss the "Wrap Around" option on Find-Replace.

Answer 1

[Malcolm Lidierth]

Why has the menu system survived for so long in so many software packages? Because it is a triumph of design and function. File->Open, Edit->Paste were ubiquitous. When I downloaded a trial of a software package I had not used before, I knew immediately how to get started.

Ribbons are a retrograde step. They leave both new and "veteran" users of software struggling to find the right button. They are triumphs of style over substance.

[Jan]

+1, I really agree. Unfortunately my grand-mother used the same argument in a discussion about type writers and computers. Therefore I consider if I'm only getting old for ribbons.

[Malcolm Lidierth]

@Jan

But computer manufacturers had enough sense to copy the typewriter manufacturers QWERTY keyboard. Software developers (note not users) now seem committed to getting rid of its screen equivalent.

[Robert Cumming]

+1 I really agree on this - I cannot understand why they want to change it...

I have no access to actually test it - so this comment is based on the online screen shots I've seen and my hatred of office since they introduced it.

[Matt Fig]

+1 Same reasons I hated this when Office did it. Let's take something that works really well, is universally known and compact, and make it pretty but confusing, bulky and ADD-inducing.

[Eric Keller]

and it's doubly bad because mathworks have that toy-like ribbon there taking up valuable real estate. I guess some of us can use 30" screens, but most everyone else is using monitors with 1080 vertical lines. So if you use up 200 of those lines with cruft, it's not doing anyone any favors. I look at that thing and think it could and should shrink by 50%. At least microsoft was smart enough to hide the 'file' part of the menu under the icon.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Eric,

You can minimize the toolstrip so that it does not take up the real estate. Right click on it -> Minimize it.

[David]

Thank god!

[David]

But really, thank you!

[tronic]

From seeing the word "apps" I start having a wish to switch back to Comodore. Maybe I'm biased but seeing all these user friendly interface additions makes me feel less serious about the contents. Right now I'm unsuccessfully trying to customize the color scheme (can't find it.. I will hopefully in few more minutes..).

[cr]

I felt likewise, working with MS Word. But I found Matlab toolstrip fine.

[Serge]

I despise the ribbon ( a waste of screen, particularly on a laptop ) so I hide it and use ‘Quick Access Toolbar’.

However I also rely on docking (editor + figure + command line). and in 2018a it is not possible to add figure commands to the quick access, so I spend hours hacking figure shortcuts (zoom, etc) with icons, which kind of works. But then copying the shortcuts to another PC is almost impossible! One has to copy all the icon figures and FavoriteCommands.xml, MATLABDesktop.xml, MATLABQuickAccess.xml, matlab.settings, etc from C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2018a, and then fix the shortcuts to point at the icons… argh!

What I have so far:

Now I spend days synchronize MatLab preferences and shortcuts across computers. :( But I will not give up! yet..

@MathWorks

1. There needs to be a sync option for preferences and shortcuts using the MatLab account through the web.

2. Also an option to export/import all preferences and shortcuts as a file.

3. Allow user to add figure icons to the quick access toolbar.

4. Allow user to use classic toolbar (ie pre ribbons).

[cui,xingxing]

@Serge +1，It hasn't changed much in ten years since the 2012b change of interface to the current 2022a Your suggestion is a good one!

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1671199-mathworks-it-s-time-for-a-dark-theme#comment_2311085

[DGM]

For a while, I thought that customizing the QAT would be a viable workaround, but at the time, I was using multiple computers between my lab and others. Maintaining any workaround was out of the question. All I'd ever have is the ribbon and default QAT. I simply minimized the ribbon, ignored the QAT, and stopped using both in favor of doing as much as possible via keyboard and console.

Toolbars were a useful, flexible component of mouse-driven interfaces, then came ribbons that were inflexible, unfixable wastes of space designed to be gaudy showcases of developer's feature interests instead of a simple palette of user's needs. When a mouse-driven UI design so strongly encourages users to revert to using the keyboard in avoidance, it's a naked failure.

[Shane Begani]

what should i do next once i enter the licence and it says activation complete

[DGM]

@Shane Begani: What? What's that have to do with UI changes made in R2012b? Are you trying to install R2012b? I don't remember if there is anything different that needs to be done in the older versions, but once activation is complete, you're done. You close the installer and launch MATLAB from the Start menu or where ever is appropriate for your OS.

If this has nothing to do with R2012b, why are you hiding a question as a comment in a random old thread somewhere?

Answer 2

[Yair Altman]

I must say that I expected more from ML8 than a Desktop facelift. Yes, I know it's anything but "simple", and I am aware of the few incremented upgrades (a few of which I like, particularly the static Java classpath/librarypath thingy that I wrote about in my latest post). Still, I would have liked a major version upgrade to include major changes to the figure window and GUI controls (anyone mention HG2?), upgraded JIT engine, better memory management and monitoring tools, improved start-up speed, and better use of modern multi-core and GPU capabilities. Please don't try to sell me stories that the small set of incremental improvements are worthy of a major release.

When MTW last added a major engine upgrade (JIT), they called the new release 6.5, not even a full major version mind you. Calling this new version 8.0 is perhaps only a marketing ploy, but I think many ardent Matlabers, who eagerly await a serious upgrade for many years now, might even be offended. I for one was disappointed.

I know it's not the same engineering skill-set and I understand the business tradeoffs and the different TTM for engine upgrades vs. facelift upgrades. Still, I thought I'd share my personal 0.02.

[Jan]

Several other people, even TMW employees, expected substantial changes for the new major version. I personally do not care, if the version number is 7.15 or 8.0, as long as the number is growing. The change from 7.9 to 7.10 caused more troubles...

I even would be glad about a new release, which contains bugfixes only and not even one new feature. A facelift is useful for me if it increases the productivity. I do not like to spend hours to learn new features, which save minutes or work.

Obviously HG2 is not ready for publication yet. But some features of HG2 can be found since so many years in Matlab, that I start looking forward to seeing HG3 implemented.

[Image Analyst]

What is HG2? Google does not bring up anything even remotely related to MATLAB or programming.

[Malcolm Lidierth]

@Image Analyst I get about 20000 hits for "matlab hg2". The first few links provide the answer.

[Jan]

@IA: I suggest to read Yair's blog from start to end. It's a treasure.

[Richard Crozier]

HG2 refers to handle graphics 2 I suspect. In development hell for some time.

Answer 3

[Michelle Hirsch]

(cross-posting a comment I just submitted on Loren's blog)

Hey everybody – it’s Scott here. I’m the head of the MATLAB product management team, responsible for steering the overall direction for MATLAB. Many of you know me from my more active days on the file exchange, blogs, or personally from my years of traveling to meet with MATLAB users around the US and the world. (I also happen to be the dorky looking guy in the What’s new in MATLAB video, with a voice not nearly as charming as the legendary Scottish voice of MATLAB …)

I wanted to let you know that we are listening. We really appreciate all of your feedback, and particularly the passion that all of you bring to MATLAB.

I believe that we all have the same goals – we want MATLAB to be great, to continue to be adopted by more and more users around the world, everyone from experienced programmers to engineers who are limping by analyzing data with spreadsheets.

To this end, we have a large development team working on many different fronts. We are working on graphics, performance, language, libraries, GUI building, etc. Each of these moves forward on its own timeline, with capabilities released as soon as they are ready. It just so happens that our updates to the desktop and help system happened to be ready at 12b, while much of the work in other areas is still in progress.

I’ve seen some comments here and elsewhere on expectations for “version 8.” We decided to rev the version number to 8, mainly because we were tired of 7.1x … It doesn’t mean that you have to wait 8 more years for a “9″ to see some of the other features you are hoping for. You’ve probably noticed that we’ve been de-emphasizing version numbers of the past several years as we’ve switched to releasing features as they are ready every 6 months instead of bundling up all big changes into a single major release. We are continuing with this approach.

I really hope that you will give the new release a real try before dismissing it. It’s been said before, but we tested this release a ton with users, including ones with lots of experience who use MATLAB very heavily. Keep in mind that the new version had to pass the muster of our own development organization, which is likely one of the largest groups of professional software developers using MATLAB in the world. There are a lot of features (which we will cover in subsequent blogs) that we put in specifically to ensure that power users could continue to have highly productive workflows in the MATLAB desktop.

We look forward to hearing your continued feedback, particularly from those of you who can find the time to invest energy in really trying out the new release. As you learn your way around, let us know what’s working (“hey, I never knew you could jump the debugger to the current line”) and what’s not (“I really want to be able to separate the items in my quick access toolbar”).

Thanks again. As always, I’m happy to communicate via the community, or privately if you prefer. My email address is listed on my File Exchange page.

[Jan]

@Scott, Thanks for your answer. It is important to hear, that TMW is listening to the opinions of users.

Ribbons are debatable - I've seen a positive vote in the current discussion also. A -legacy flag, which displays the IDE old and experienced Matlab users are accustomed to, would have helped to ease the emotions.

Did any of your usability tester think, that the new help layout, e.g. online doc: figure properties is better than the old style?

[Michelle Hirsch]

@Jan - we've heard similar feedback on that specific page. It is one example where the template we designed which has worked very well on many pages didn't work as well for this page. The team continues to refine the designs and work to weed out issues like this one.

On a separate note - thanks for supporting such a lively discussion from the community!

[Malcolm Lidierth]

@Scott

"...particularly from those of you who can find the time to invest energy in really trying out the new release."

But using MATLAB is supposed to save me time and energy. I tested the Beta, and gave cool to indifferent feedback on it and the more time and energy I invest on R2012b the more I dislike it. I want the old menus back - so I find myself switching to R2012a instead. Maybe that's the problem - but my employer has different ideas to TMW about where I should be spending my time and energy.

Perhaps TMW could set up a Luddites Corner on its website where some of us might feel more at home.

[Yair Altman]

+1 for crisis management. We need to give TMW credit for understanding that there is an out-of-the-ordinary situation here and for very quickly entering into a useful productive dialog about this. I don't think we have seen such willing dialogs from Redmond when all hell broke loose in Office'07. Cynics might hold their judgment until all the problems are fixed, but at this early stage I think the response is about as much as could be expected from the best of companies. Software fixes at the scale of a major Matlab release are not measured in days but in months.

It seems to me that restoring the main menu will alleviate most of the pain for most of the complainers. This seems like a rather simple patch to do, and I would advise TMW to post such a patch. I'd give it a go myself, but an official patch would obviously be much better, and would go a long way in restoring user satisfaction. Then we would still have the toolstrip, but users would also be able to access functionality via the non-obtrusive menu, which should significantly ease the learning curve.

The question of whether or not there should be a unified or separate patch for the doc template, I leave open. But what I think is certain is that a solution should not wait until 13a - IMHO a patch to 12b is indeed called for.

I also think that if TMW for a moment forgoes its policy of keeping mum about its roadmap and commits to such a patch at some future date, then the level of user anxiety (not to say animosity) will immediately subside.

Handled correctly, TMW might even score points from this crisis, gaining users' trust and loyalty for years to come.

[Michelle Hirsch]

@Malcolm -

I certainly appreciate where you are coming from. I remember your feedback from the beta, and do appreciate the energy you put into helping us understand what was working and what wasn't working. I'm sorry to hear that you aren't growing more comfortable with the Toolstrip over time.

Every release raises the question of "is it worth it to move to this release". This is a balance of what new things the release offers and what costs are associated with moving to the release (typically, dealing with incompatibilities, learning how to use the new features). It's obviously a more challenging calculus this go 'round for you, since you aren't (yet?) finding benefits from the new release (apps packaging, text import tool, "did you mean" suggestions, perhaps?)

[Thomas Hoffend]

In my opinion The Mathworks wasted significant time and development money "improving" an interface that was not broken and very possibly irritating other long-time licensees besides me. This is the sort of goofy hijinks I have come to expect from Microsoft for its office products but not from a company such as The Mathworks that specializes in computational tools for scientists and engineers.

First off, the help is broken. Every time I try to search help a get a widget from Visual Studio pops up asking if I want to debug a web page or I get a popup about a scripting error. I do not understand how something like this could pass through beta. The new help browser is also a step backwards. I am not interested in Microsoft or Adobe style web searching for my help files. All I want is fast access to the documentation for Matlab and the toolboxes that I license. The old help and documentation system was not broken.

Second the tool strip wastes space and provides no real advantage. What the tool strip does accomplish is reduction of efficient access to icons such as the code cell stepping icons that used to be at the top of the editor pane.

Personally, I would put my development dollars into enhancing code run speed and adding computational features and algorithms to core Matlab rather than doing flashy new things to the interface that will just end up irritating us old timers (been using Matlab on and off since the late 80's and maintaining my current license for almost 20 years now).

[Thomas Hoffend]

I decided to try the 2012b update some more on a real task involving computational image processing and image-based metrology. I am really not liking this update at all. I am accustomed to making docked figures and then using the zoom and rotate tools to look at my computations and/or data. I instinctively moved the cursor up for the zoom icon and it was not there. The figure tools are up on the tool strip, but this just adds an extra mouse movement and click; it is an inconvenience. Why did you guys add this stuff?

[Jan]

@Thomas Hoffend: I'm using a simple tool, which allows spatial navigation with the mouse programmatically without using the toolbar. I find this even more intuitive. There are some similar tools in the FEX.

[Thomas Hoffend]

That is great Jan, but I should not have to search, find, download, and install a new tool and retrain my brain/muscle memory to learn to work with it.

The point is that I, and probably many other long-time users, have an established work flow that functions very well for us. Some past additions to Matlab worked within established work flow patterns and enhanced productivity. Core cells would be one example.

I am rarely inspired or annoyed enough to make comments concerning a software product. This update messes with my workflow significantly and offers nothing in return. I have decided to go back to using a previous version until The Mathworks sorts this out. If The Mathworks really is listening to this thread, then there should be some intense "firefighting" meetings going on right now.

[Jacob Shea]

Just updated to 2013a from 2012a and I agree with @Thomas Hoffend about the figure toolbar. I make heavy use of it and prefer to dock my figures in a lower panel on the screen. Moving the figure toolstrip to the main ribbon from the figure window is absolutely maddening to me. Instead of a tiny mouse movement from the plot to change the figure tool and back, I now have to move the mouse all the way across the screen and back. Came here to find the option to dock the figure toolstrip on the figure window, leaving sorely disappointed with the UI redesign.

Ditto that complaint for the debug tools which have been removed from the editor window. Seriously interferes with my UI efficiency. Thumbs down, way way down.

Answer 4

[Oleg Komarov]

I already let TMW know but I'll be posting here as well:

• I miss the previous edit configurations window. Now I have to create separate m-files (which I did not want to do) and call them instead of keeping my testing suite hidden in the configurations for the specific function (script).

Thinking whether to feedback this as well:

I personally DO NOT like the ribbon, it takes way too much space. Nowadays wide screens are the standard format and giving so much space to a ribbon is inefficient. Hiding the ribbon on the other hand forces me to remember all the shortcuts by heart. One single line toolbar was perfect. Maybe I am just averse to significant changes.

[Jan]

I agree that the toolbar was perfect already. I'm using a tool to hide the toolbar of the former versions programmatically on a low-res-laptop.

[Sean de Wolski]

Oleg, Have you tried adding your favorite shortcuts to the "Quick Access Toolbar" (the one next to the search in upper right)? For me this made 12b much easier to get used to from initial shock. I put "Play", "Evaluate Cell" and all of my favorite Debug buttons up there and can keep the toolstrip minimized...

[Matt Tearle]

If you minimize the toolstrip, isn't the result pretty much the same as the old menu bar? There's a thin strip with the tab names; you click on those and the tab drops down, pretty much like a menu would.

(Not trying to force you to drink the kool-aid and like the toolstrip, just asking.)

[Oleg Komarov]

Maybe I have not experimented enough but I use the Quick Access Toolbar to keep shortcuts.

I keep the names on the shortcuts, i.e. hey take quite some space already, and I used to have shortcuts in a separate place from the buttons.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Matt. The biggest issue I've had is with a docked editor sometimes the editor tab is not visible and is always align-left, where I keep my editor docked align right. Using the quick-access-toolbar keeps: play/evaluate cell/dbstep/New etc. readily available all of the time and above the editor.

Also I really like the black2blue color scheme :)

[Jan]

Is the appearence of the command window GUI important for your work? I still use the command window and an editor window, while all other stuff is closed. During debuggung the worspace browser is opened on demand only. But even the new (Matlab >= 2008b?) powerful menu for controlling the debugging in the editor overwhelms me by its multi-levelness and changing strings - I prefer to type "dbstop if all error" in the command line, while I cannot find the corresponding menu anymore.

While the GUI of the programming environment is less important for me, I miss improvements in the GUIs, which can be created for users. There is still no documented UITREE and the UIPANEL, UITABLE and UITAB is in its infancy also. Why do I need a programming environment looking like MS-Office2010, when I create GUIs looking like pre-Atari 1040 from 1986? To be fair, the Atari had a BW or 256 color monitor only. Why do I have to ask Yair, when I want the interfaces in the 21th century style?

I have to work with different Matlab releases and any greater change disturbs the comfort substantially. Is it possible to enable the old appearance?

[Sean de Wolski]

Is it possible to enable the old appearance?

No. There is no -legacy mode.

[Sarah Wait Zaranek]

@Oleg -

(Mathworker here - I noticed people didn't know Matt was one - so I wanted to make everyone knew that I was).

I like the option of moving the Quick Access Toolbar down below the toolstrip (right click to move it) and then I have room for more buttons and my labels. Would that help so that you don't have to memorize anything? Just an idea.

Oh - and I made this intro video to the new desktop that might be useful and addresses some of the customization questions-

Link here: http://www.mathworks.com/videos/new-matlab-desktop-70403.html

[Oleg Komarov]

I have to admit I didn't understand at first that the QAT could be dragged below, but soon I realised it and I asked Matt (see comments under his post) if it was possible to add vertical separators.

So, all in all the QAT will be a sufficient replacement (actually optimal if it had the vertical separators), but I am still very annoyed by the run configurations dropdown (which is also a bit buggy because the edit button highlights only part of the commands).

[Alex]

+1 for -legacy mode

[Oleg Komarov]

I agree, it's emerging from the discussion a reasonable request, support for -legacy interface for those who don't want the ribbon.

[Jan]

You can use the old interface by staying at R2012a. But this seems to be no option for the ones who answer in this thread. I'm interested in the reasons, because there are obviously good reasons for an upgrade. There are larger changes in Simulink, but it seems like the Simulink users do not communicate in this forum frequently.

[Kevin Sharp]

I'm thinking of cancelling my maintenance contract and sticking with R2012a. Ribbons and the new help browser are a big step backwards. A legacy mode would help.

[Thomas Hoffend]

There should be no need for a "legacy" mode. Major interface changes for a product as mature as Matlab and having such a large installed and long-time user base should never be made unless absolutely necessary.

There is always a drive to remain current. In my opinion, cancelling a maintenance agreement is not a good idea for an industrial licensee such as myself unless my plan is to move on to a completely different productivity-enhancing computational environment.

[Daniel Shub]

@Thomas, you say "a large installed and long-time user base should never be made unless absolutely necessary" like it is a certainty, yet every software package that I can think of that has anything beyond a CLI has made these changes. According to your philosophy MATLAB should never have "abandoned" the CLI. I can think of lots of software that has done exactly what you say shouldn't happen. At the desktop environment level both FOSS (KDE and Gnome) and proprietary (Windows and Mac) have undergone huge "unnecessary" changes. All have meet with initial user complaints, which tend to die down eventually. Internet browsers have also see changes (e.g., tab browsing) as well as office applications (OpenOffice and MS Office).

[Jan]

@Daniel: Evolution does not have a direction. Here software packages do not differ from biological species. A new GUI philosophy will survive, it is fitter than others - and this does not necessarily mean better. Even the perfectly adjusted saber-tooth tiger became extinct.

[Thomas Hoffend]

The CLI still exists in 2012b. I get the analogy though. Some code changes are useful upgrades and some are hindrances. Core cells were an incredible productivity enhancer for me. The context-sensitive editor also has helped quite a bit. I happen to think that the 2012b interface is a hindrance. I also suspect that the transition was never requested by users. However there are many other enhancements that have been requested.

In regards to various other software packages, I am reminded of the old cliche' "if everyone jumps off a cliff does that mean you should too?" Not that it matters, but there are plenty of specialized professional computational software packages that do not use a toolstrip and that probably do not have the development funds to waste going in that direction.

The fact that this trendy interface appeared in Matlab suggests to me that TMW has become too large and lost its connection with its real customers. I read Scott's words below "the new version had to pass the muster of our own development organization, which is likely one of the largest groups of professional software developers using MATLAB in the world". That pretty much sums it up.

Answer 5

[Ian]

As usual, a lot of disappointment. I'm sure the UI refactoring is useful to some people, but the ribbon is a conceptual reassignment of function locations, which at best offers greater discoverability for new users, and at worst a disorienting experience for those used to a menu paradigm (in which case, keyboard shortcuts are your friend). As an OS X user, the ribbon adds nothing of value. Nevertheless overall this really is a minor change (do people really twiddle with the UI for most of the time in Matlab, are they really saving substantial time clicking through ribbon tabs than a menu?). Matlab has a number of core features used daily that are in desperate need of updating:

1. Graphics are still rendered without anti-aliasing and robust alpha opacity support with the default renderer. We have a hodge-podge of 3 different renderers each with a set of drawbacks (i.e. opacity support in OpenGL causes vector export to fail!!!). Where is the modern graphics support, something like a native PDF or SVG engine, per item opacity and full anti-aliasing without compromises? Pixellated klunky graphing is embarrassing for a suite for which visualisation is a core component...
2. Guide is a bug ridden, slow and hugely limited mess. The UI toolkit is already very limited in Matlab, but then Matlab wraps that in a really dated, slow UI editor. It falls over when dealing with anything more than simplistic UIs (try multiple selecting groups of components and arrow-key positioning them; or try changing tab order, and watch Matlab brought to its knees). Give us a modern UI toolkit (it is already mostly there under the surface, see undocumented matlab), and build a UI editor that doesn't suck. Why does TMW hide things like HG2 for years!?!?
3. Editor is still very basic. I'd realy like to see better/smarter completions for things like class properties, and a structure browser for methods/subfunctions. Something like "Go to anything..." (fuzzy find any file/function/class/method anywhere in the path) in Sublime Text 2 would be awesome.
4. More robust parallelization; The parallel computing toolbox is very useful, but it would be really helpful to have some of that core functionality within Matlab itself, these should be language features, not added extras.
5. Better platform integration: On OS X we still are waiting for clipboard support for vector graphics (OS X had PDF built-in, this is not difficult), and even simple Applescript abilities would allow very powerful integration with other apps (like Excel for example). I'm sure gnome/kde would benefit from similar changes too. TMW seems to only really support Windows platform specific features and technologies, and the other platforms are second-class citizens (but we don't get financial discounts for reduced functionality)...
6. EDIT: Serialisation for Matlab objects, very important when communicating among several Matlab instances.

So another 6 month wait and we can only dream we will get a release that is more than tweaks to the UI.

[Daniel Shub]

It is funny, I would class 1, 2, 3, and 5 as UI issues. I am not sure, but I don't think that any of the toolboxes modify the core MATLAB libraries. I believe if you had the time and skill you could write these functions yourself.

[Jan]

Neither PDF nor SVG are designed for 3D display, in opposite to OpenGL. Therefore it is not surprising, that the vector output of OpenGL-rendered figures fails. VRML would be an alternative, but you need some extra toolboxes.

[Ian]

@Daniel: The problems are that these requires changes to core matlab functionality. The issue raised in (1) require a new graphics renderer and retooling of handle graphics interfaces; core changes, not UI ones. (2) Guide 2 needs engineering work r.e. performance and bugs and would also need better underlying uicontrols to bring it to feature parity with other GUI editors. This is more than just adding a ribbon or moving icons around. (3) is UI for sure. (5) is core architecture, TMW needs to utilise APIs for each platform, this is again not solved by new icons or moving UI components around, but supporting things like Scripting Bridge / Applescript dictionaries and native PDF representations for graphics.

@Jan: I'm really talking about 2D plots, i.e. if you want to use opacity for points in a scatter plot, and not have aliased lines and text and want to export it as vectors. Although a smart renderer would be able to collapse a 3D plot into 2D patches...

In reference to the cross-platform clipboard support, you can copy vector art to the clipboard in Windows, but not in OS X even though OS X supports vectors format for that natively. This is irrespective of OpenGL, OpenGL is sadly the only way we can currently support alpha transparency even in 2D plots. Matlab simply need a smart renderer which handles these things, the crazy set of compromises painters, zbuffer and OpenGL force upon the user should not be necessary.

[Walter Roberson]

I thought PDF could not handle transparency? Or is that a limit only for Postscript?

[Ian]

Walter, PDF handles transparency just fine, I use Adobe Illustrator that exports to PDF with per-item opacity perfectly preserved. I don't really mind what vector format Mathworks supports (SVG is another great candidate), but I'd just like a robust handle graphics renderer that can handle opacity, anti-aliases properly and can export to vectors when relelvant (and can cope with copy/paste). This has been techically possible for years now.

[Malcolm Lidierth]

@Ian

Apologies for promoting my own code but:

a forthcoming "alpha" release of Project Waterloo (free and open-source) provides a pure Java 2D graphics library together with a MATLAB-like API e.g. scatter, line etc. It supports anti-aliased graphics and text, transparency (at single color, plot and graph level) and is fully serializable to XML. In MATLAB, Waterloo graphics and MATLAB graphics can be mixed in a single figure (snapshot below form R2012b on a Mac: top-left/bottom-right=MATLAB, top-right/bottom-left=Waterloo). Copy/paste has yet to be implemented (the code is being developed still) but output to SVG and PDF are supported.

The new version will be posted to SourceForge early October (see http://sigtool.sourceforge.net/)

Answer 6

[Eric]

My biggest gripe with the ribbon interface is the enormous amount of screen space it wastes. But the ability to hide it and put my favorite buttons in the quick access toolbar and the ability to put the quick access toolbar and current folder toolbar on the same line helps considerably. I do miss the "Execute entire file" button since it doesn't force you to change the current directory the way the Run button does.

Also, it would be nice if the Mathworks would admit this is a ribbon and use the Ctrl+F1 keyboard shortcut to allow hiding it. If you're going to copy Office's interface, you might as well copy their keyboard shortcuts as well.

A bigger concern for me is that this is where the Mathworks is choosing to apply its resources. They are clearly more concerned about bringing in new users than adding functionality.

This reminds me a lot of what happened to Mathcad when it was bought by PTC. PTC's first full release of Mathcad, Mathcad Prime, actually had reduced functionality compared to Mathcad 15. Many of my documents from Mathcad 14 actually would not work with Mathcad Prime because of this. Mathcad Prime introduced the ribbon interface as well. Maybe Mathcad Prime 2.0 has restored all of the functionality that had previously been lost, but I wouldn't know as I no longer use the program.

That's not to say this is necessarily a bad decision by the Mathworks. They're just optimizing to a different metric. Maybe alienating a few advanced users and allowing the functionality to stagnate is worth it if you can bring in a significant number of new users.

-Eric

[Sean de Wolski]

Hi Eric, You can add "Evaluate Entire File" as a Keyboard shortcut (though I can't find a button for it unfortunately).

1. Home
2. Preferences
3. Keyboard
4. Shortcuts
5. Evaluate entire file

[Oleg Komarov]

I like Eric's comments about the users being target but I also find it sad. I don't see many improvements in functionality (if not a reduction) and as Jan says there's quite a mismatch between the actual appearance and the achievable. I would like to be able to achieve Ribbon like GUI's with plain MATLAB or be given an adapted documentation (with examples) to implement Java.

People say one step at a time...

[Eric]

@Sean: Thanks for this. Maybe the button will be resurrected in a future release. In a sense I guess there already is a default keyboard shortcut for this: Ctrl+a, F9. Maybe that's why there's none by default. I'll probably get into the habit of using that.

[Matt Tearle]

I also complained about the loss of the "evaluate file" option. Maybe it will come back?

In designing the Toolstrip, I think they made some design decisions to remove or deemphasize features they thought weren't important. No doubt some people will disagree with some of those decisions. (Eg, me, when it comes to the "evaluate entire file" option!)

In that vein, regarding "more concerned about bringing in new users than adding functionality"... I don't think it's a matter of one versus the other. Nor even of just "bringing in new users" (although I'm sure the business leadership wants that as well, of course). Have a look at the new features in this release and you can see it's not all about the toolstrip (abstract classes and expanded file I/O capabilities, for example). Obviously 12b is a major change to the look and feel, and that's dominating the news and discussion for this particular release. But improvements and new features are still being continuously added.

We do want to make MATLAB easier and nicer for new users to learn and work with. And we definitely want users to discover the cool features available (established users, not just new users). IMO, a good example of that is the "Run and Time" button, which I think will introduce users to the Profiler much more readily than the old "Profile" button. See also your point #3 in your other post. So, in that sense, this release does represent an effort to give value particularly to new (and newish) users. But I don't see it as at the expense of continuing to develop MATLAB for power users as well.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking here of my view and understanding as a MathWorker, but not as anyone involved in the high-level strategic planning and whatnot. (IOW, insert standard "does not necessarily represent the views of The MathWorks, Inc" here.)

[Stephen]

If you do want to make MATLAB easier and nicer for new users, I honestly question the direction of the new DOCUMENTATION. I have been a (very) long time MATLAB user and I thought what you had before was wonderful. It could be read like a book or used as a reference. I find it now almost impossible to find anything and to use. I find myself constantly having to click with the mouse to get anyhwere. Just my 2cents. As far as the interface, that is small in comparison to the list of other grievances that I have with the way Mathworks is doing business lately. In Mathematica you get parallel functionality, compile to c for speed, statistical distributions, and many other addon functionality built into the software for a very comparable price. Also for those of us with retirement or switching jobs on the horizon there is a home edition with the same functionality for a small fraction of the cost. Please don't get me started.

[Image Analyst]

Matt, I never knew you worked for The Mathworks - perhaps you should make that clear in your profile, like Sean, Randy, and some others do.

[Walter Roberson]

Matt Tearle used to have the little Mathworks logo beside his name, as did the other Mathworkers.

[Sarah Wait Zaranek]

@Eric -

Dave G and I noticed the evaluate all question on Loren's blog. Not sure if you saw the answer there. But instead of doing ctrl-a; F9 which ends up copying everything to the command window, you can also evalute an entire file using the documented editor api that was released about a year ago. You can put it then behind a shortcut button as a make-shift replacement for the missing button -

Code here -

activeEditor = matlab.desktop.editor.getActive ;
eval(activeEditor.Text) ;

This might help a bit.

[Eric]

Sarah,

Thanks for this - I'll try it out. If I can get that button back I think I can use 2012b in the same way as I did 2012a.

-Eric

Answer 7

[Yair Altman]

Not less importantly than the documentation layout, many online doc pages have changed URLs, and the old URLs no longer work. I see this as a serious regression problem. I strongly urge MathWorks to redirect all the previous URLs to the new ones (server side redirect - http "301 Permanently Moved") so that old links, of which there are tons across the net, are not broken. I fail to see how this has gotten past the QA phase.

[Wendy Fullam]

In MATLAB R2012b, the URLs of many online documentation pages have been improved to be more readable.

For example, a link to the Simulink Debugger documentation that used to be:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/simulink/ug/f5-6104.html

Now looks like:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/simulink/debugging.html

Prior to the release of MATLAB R2012b, redirects were put in place to handle a majority of reference pages, the release notes, and the installation guides. For example, the following link:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/plot.html

automatically redirects to the new URL:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plot.html

However some pages have not been redirected for various reasons. Given feedback like this, we are looking into creating more redirects as soon as possible.

If you encounter such page, you have 2 options.

Option 1:

You can access the information you are looking for in a previous release of the doc. This can be done by adding /releases/R2012a/ between /help/ and /toolbox/ in the URL.

For example, the R2012a documentation section about the Simulink Debugger can be reached by changing this link:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/simulink/ug/f5-6104.html

to:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/ releases/R2012a/ toolbox/simulink/ug/f5-6104.html

Option 2:

If you do attempt to click on a link for a page which no longer exists in R2012b documentation, you will instead be brought to the landing page for the product you are requesting, and prompted to search, instead.

For example, the troubleshooting information for the Image Acquisition Toolbox, which was located here: http://www.mathworks.com/help/toolbox/imaq/f16-51679.html, no longer exists. This topic underwent a major reorganization. However, upon clicking on that page, you will be brought to the landing page for the Image Acquisition Toolbox with a search box inserted at the top. If you search for Troubleshooting in Image Acquisition Toolbox, the first link that appears in the search suggestions is the page you need:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/imaq/troubleshooting-1.html

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

[Walter Roberson]

I have encountered this problem several times, and each time it has seemed needless.

I had particular trouble finding the current equivalent to the summary of the MuPAD symbolic libraries, previously at http://www.mathworks.com/help/mupad/stdlib/index.html

[Wendy Fullam]

@Walter, I think you might be looking for one of the following pages: http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/getting-started-with-mupad.html

or

http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/mupad_ug/using-the-mupad-libraries.html

[Walter Roberson]

The information about the libraries and what they do is not present in those two links. The second of those two links basically says that you have to ask for the documentation within MuPAD (though I guess you could feval(symengine,'info',LIBRARYNAME) ). That is a disappointing drop in the quality of the online documentation.

Before, the web site documentation contained enough information to be able to browse through the libraries to see what was there, and to read the documentation for individual function calls. Now, though, to have any chance of finding the documentation on the web site, you need to already know exactly what you are looking for.

I try to advise people on how to use MuPAD, using my experience with similar languages and then looking up MuPAD equivalents on the web site. Now I effectively cannot do that except by looking back at the documentation for previous releases. (To clarify, I do not have the toolbox myself, but I am trying to assist people who do.)

[Wendy Fullam]

I reached out to the author for more assistance and they suggested you might be looking for the following:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/mupadfunctionlist.html

http://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/mupadfunctionlist-alpha.html

If these are what you're looking for, your experience may suggest that the link to the function lists at the bottom of product pages are not easily discoverable. We've noted this and are considering future adjustments which would make these links more obvious.

[Walter Roberson]

Yes, those lists should be helpful, and No, I had not found them. I looked through several parts of the documentation (now that I know what I should be looking for), but was not able to observe these links anywhere.

[Wendy Fullam]

Currently the links to Function and Blocks lists are nested in the bottom nav bar on the product landing page for that product.

For example, on the landing page for MATLAB, The link is at the bottom, next to the link to the .pdf doc.

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/index.html

You can also get to the list via the Table of Content (TOC), toward the bottom of the list. The TOC is highlighted at time 1:52 in this video: http://www.mathworks.com/videos/redesigned-help-70405.html

[Walter Roberson]

Huh, so it is. I did not notice it there on the product page.

I do not expect an important documentation index such as that to be found on a sales product page and not (at least that I could see) on the Documentation page for the toolbox.

[Walter Roberson]

Please put back the ability to search in other releases right from every document page! It is a nuisance to have to head up to the top of the documentation to find the link to get to the archives list to search from there.

Better yet would be to have every page able to search for its equivalent in previous releases.

[Wendy Fullam]

Thanks for the feedback, Walter. I will share your input with our development leads.

Answer 8

[Alex]

I agree with the majority here that the Ribbon is a very disappoint UI change.

At the very best the UI wastes screen real estate, at worst it requires more clicks without adding functionality.

Why are the icons trip height taking up more valuable room in the vertical direction while half the strip is gray empty space in the horizontal direction?

Previously, the icons for various actions were in the window they pertained to (i.e. step, step into, continue, etc. were in the editor window), now one must to go to the top of the screen, click a tab, then click the button.

Poorly conceived. Time would have been better spent on real enhancements to the language.

[Daniel Shub]

What would you consider a real enhancement to the language? From the what's missing question many of the "answers" are about the UI. Are you talking about additional functions that can be written in MATLAB or new functions that need access to the underlying proprietary code?

[Sean de Wolski]

Add all of the debugging stuff/section (cell) mode stuff to the Quick Access Toolbar - this is what I have and what makes it considerably easier to use.

[Alex]

Daniel,

How about support for native support for file formats like DPX and OpenEXR. Half Data type support. Better parallelization with support for parallelization in basic functions. The ability to specify a custom template to be used when hitting "New" -> "Function" Fixing what I think are memory leaks ... etc.

Alex

[Alex]

Sean,

Yes, I know you can add them to the quick access toolbar but that only works so well. Before each window had the icons related to that window in that window. Using the quick access toolbar bunches all icons in one strip regardless whether they are related to each other or not. How about a quick access toolbar for each docked window in that docked window?

Alex

[Walter Roberson]

In the time since the answers forum opened in January 2011, I do not recall seeing any other reference to OpenEXR. Looking online at what it is, it seems to me that it would not be a common need.

I am having difficulty finding any evidence that Intel processors support the 16f ("half-data") format in hardware ? Does it have general use beyond something like VRML ?

[Alex]

OpenEXR is the major format used in visual FX for the motion picture industry and is the basis for the proposed ACES container standard for a archival digital source master file. For most of us working on HDR imaging processing in the real world this is really the only format used. It support various data types but the most popular is half because of the reasonable precision and file size balance. It also supports a variety of other features which radiance does not which is why radiance isn't really used in the real world.

A constrained version of OpenEXR is being standardized as we speak in SMPTE (2065-4) and should be finalized shortly.

[Sean de Wolski]

Alex: the OpenEXR discussion should really be a new question since it's not related to the 12b release.

Have you seen:

http://www.mit.edu/~kimo/software/matlabexr/

[Alex]

@Sean

I agree this should be a new topic. It sort of organically grew out of the 2012b discussion. Also, I'm familiar with the tool your provided the link for, however, it does have some pretty signifincant limitations. Mathworks support for DPX and EXR would be much preferred because it's documented, tested, and confirmed to work well.

[David Garrison]

Alex,

I can answer your question as to why there is empty grey area at the right of some of the tabs (mostly the Home tab). Part of the reason is that we have to design for a wide variety of screen sizes and resolutions and part of the reason is to allow for future additions to a given tab.

Answer 9

[Star Strider]

In addition to the Shortcut porting problem IA noted, I find ‘Help’ to be significantly less helpful than in previous releases. (I use Help often because of all the complexities in the various functions and function changes between versions.) In addition to Kevin's comments about Help for the Editor having disappeared, the toolbox ‘tree’ in the left panel of Help that I always found so useful no longer exists. That makes browsing — and discovering new ways to do things — more difficult.

It is also more difficult to actually read the Help entries. The various topic titles within each Help entry seem to be the same size and font as their descriptions, making it a challenge to find the various topics. The titles blend in with the descriptions.

Please bring back the 2012a version of Help!

[Jan]

Do you mean help or doc? However, both are very fundamental functions for beginners and advanced users.

Two days after 2012b has launched, I tried to find the list of changes in the release notes in the net starting from the homepage. After 5 minutes I still had not found a really usable list. I gave up thinking: "Well, obviously this is a preliminary version only. Let's wait until the real version of the docs is published." I still assume that I've only hit the wrong links or have overseen some links due to a missing underlining or something like that. But, I dare to claim that I'm not an unexperienced Matlab user, when I fail to understand the documentation, it is not necessarily me who is too stupid.

In opposite to this I've been very enthusiastic about the help and docs of Matlab for so many years.

[Sean de Wolski]

@Jan:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/ "Release Notes", right under the "R2012b" in the middle. http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html

[Jan]

Thanks, Sean. The lines starting with a bold > are links. They are neither underlined not is there a hover efect, at least in my Firefox. But I image that there is a help for reading the doc, which tells me, that these are links. What a bad idea. Fortunately I've found the "expand all" link, which is displayed in blue such that the clickability is intuitively clear.

Then I find the yellow sign with the exclamation mark in the release notes, which is obviously important. Such important, that it is ok to guess what it should mean. They look fancy and as experienced user of the docs I do can guess their meaning. But usability and guessability are not the same. Nice animations of the expanding are not a helpful replacement of clarity.

After I find out how to use the release notes I hit:

 Conversion of Error and Warning Message Identifiers
 For R2012b, error and warning message identifiers have changed in MATLAB.

Fine, nice to know. I've opened the link to the solution 1-ERAFNC and found a link to a PDF(!), which contains the old and new keys. Collecting a list of strings in a PDF is a very bad idea, because it efficiently impedes an automatic search in the user-defined code. Frustrated I gave up again.

So, Sean, I admit that all required information are there, but they are not trivial to find and to use.

[Star Strider]

@ Jan Simon — I originally meant ‘Help’ — the Help browser that comes up with the ‘View product documentation (F1)’ — but I just discovered that in 2012b, ‘doc’ brings up the Help browser as well. (I rarely use ‘doc’, preferring the 2012a and previous versions Search option in the Help browser.)

Answer 10

[sfreeman]

To add perhaps a few further views on the R2012b discussion:

1. Well I am also not in favor of ribbons, however when I invest some time in getting my shortcuts on the fastlaunch bar, it does not bother me to much (like MS Office - do a ribbon which suits you and fine).

2. When you adapt ribbons, please do not only copy - go further!

a) allow users to choose icon sizes, fontsize etc. in the ribbons

b) allow users to define ribbons height - not only minimizing/maximizing

c) do not only allow shortcuts but also to allow individual icons (if you now think of apps - please see below)

3. Completely packaged apps are nice, however there is quite some use for preference files or user individual application extensions. (e. g. I use a "macro" system for one of my internal company applications, which allow users to add active buttons by placing a m-file in a certain folder) Afaik this is not possible with apps.

4. Biggest issure in my eyes is however the new help:

It started already years ago with the omission of the index tab - MATLAB and all its toolboxes are a large coding environment with an exceptional function envelope. However you can only make use of it, if you have the idea, that the function in question exists. While searching the help via the index, it was always a good occation to learn about so far unknown functions. No index, no chance to step over completely different functions.

Another opportunity to learn more MATLAB "vocabulary" was the content browser. "was" - with the new help system. With the new "table of contents" open topics do not stay open when I go to one item, the performance is lausy and even cross-browsing of different tollboxes is not possible.

After years of training new colleagues with MATLAB, where the first sentence was "MATLAB has the best help system ever!", this has now come to an end. Sad days...

________ /me sticks with the R2009a help...

[Jan]

Matlab is very powerful. While reading the Getting Started chapters is a good point to start from, getting an experienced Matlab programmer needs much more. The (formerly?) excellent help of Matlab has been fundamental for learning sophisticated details. The "See also" lines in the help texts are very helpful also (and they are still there, I hope). Inspecting the M-files reveals more details. Finally the newsgroup and forum are important also.

Therefore your impression, that the new help style is less productive, is very important. I could imagine that it was the goal of the designers to reduce the chance to get less related information, when you search in the docs. But as you say, sfreeman, sometimes (or always) totally unrelated information will be useful because it spreads the knowledge of the language. Imagine that someone tries to teach a child to talk only by answering its questions perfectly.

So it could be helpful for learning to drive the help in a more sloppy or fuzzy fashion, like:

You've look for parenthesis, but do you know the 'parent' property already?

Answer 11

[Doug Hull]

EDITOR NOTE: In the interest of putting these comments in the right place (answers to the question where they can be voted on) I am moving the comments (positive and negative) into the answers section, just like I do for other questions.

BRUCE WROTE:

This new release is HORRIBLE.... All MatLab textbooks are now broken...Is there a way to use the old workspace ???

At the monent I am having to backup a release so we can use it...

BAD and a horrible roll-out

Also because of this horrible new interface I am cancelling orders for 5 new systems.....

[Doug Hull]

Jan Simon on 17 Sep 2012 @Bruce: Could you please eleborate your opinion? Which of the new features interfere with your work? It is worth to let the responsible designers know the details, while a bashing is neither wanted nor useful.

[David Garrison]

Yes, we are very interested in specific comments you have about the Toolstrip and any suggestions that you have to make it better.

[Thomas Hoffend]

David, your comment suggests to me that Mathworks has written the changes to the interface in stone and is not willing to consider admitting it made a mistake and revert to a previous interface. The correct thing to do would be to examine your VOC's (if you have any) and decision matrix again and let us know what they say about changing the interface to Matlab in such a dramatic way. Any input data that came from within Mathworks from anyone is not valid VOC data. If you have no valid VOC data then I really would suggest that you revert.

I think specifics have been given before but here are some:

1) The toolstrip is a waste of screen real estate in a multi-functional computational and visualization environment.

2) Multiple mouse clicks are required to achieve common tasks where one was required before.

3) Hiding the toolstrip is not a viable option because required context-dependent tools are there and opening it requires an additional mouse click. In addition, if (like me) you dock your figure windows for visualizing whatever you are doing at the top (left in my case) of your screen, popping up the toolstrip will partially cover the figure that you want to rotate, zoom, etc. Suppose I want to rotate a figure. First I have to activate the figure window toolstrip context by clicking in the window. Then I have to open the toolstrip for "figure". Then I have to click on the widget for "rotate". Then I have to click back on the figure. Hopefully I don't move down and click accidentally on the portion of the figure that is now covered by the toolstrip (so I have to move the mouse further == bad ergonomics). Then I can use the rotate tool. Next suppose that I want to zoom in on a spot... wash, rinse, repeat.

4) The toolstrip is bad ergonomically for a hybrid shortcut/mouse user such as me (see number 3 above).

5) A single toolbar for favorite actions like the ones I mentioned above is not sufficient.

6) The new help system does not function nearly as conveniently as previously, where it was very easy to open to a section of a "textbook" and browse or search.

7) The new help system is broken - I get multiple types of errors from either Matlab directly or from Visual Studio (asking if I wish to debug a web page).

8) The new interface suggests that Mathworks and Matlab is going in the direction of enabling users to build cute little apps for mobile devices and not serious high performance computation/visualization tools. To me this is the most upsetting of all really.

9) Matlab is still pretty slow in many regards and could use development dollars for computation instead of flashy new interfaces (you get a "two-fer" in terms of angering long-term users) and could use some additional functionality at the core in terms of basic functions and conveniences (not in toolboxes) and parallelism (again not in special a toolbox). I still go to Intel Parallel Studio or to a commercial code that is multi-threaded for the really intensive stuff.

From a customer service point of view, whether a comment is "bashing" does not matter (I realize the word came from Jan and not you). What does matter is that a licensee is upset enough that he has cancelled five orders and told you here in this public forum. I conjecture that for every person that tells you that in public, there are several more that are doing the same thing silently. This is nothing short of a disaster for Mathworks.

There are people here with whom I work and who work very similarly to me (on different projects) with Python and SciPy/NumPy or Mathematica instead of Matlab. I am a facile Python programmer and I license Tecplot which is an excellent visualization package that has a Python interface. I use Matlab for the convenience and the maintenance all in one spot. I have not cancelled my maintenance agreement yet, but I am considering doing so.

[Thomas Hoffend]

Update: The help-related issue seems to have gone away. It was persistent after a reboot, but I am not having the issue anymore. That is weird.

Also as luck would have it, I took delivery of a new HP 8560w EliteBook last week. I tried a fresh install of 2012b on that I experienced no bugs related to help.

[CBhushan]

The earlier comment by Thomas Hoffend pretty much summed the problems from my point of view. In general, the ribbon (or toolstrip) is the most HORRIBLE 'feature' in this new version. It wastes tons of space and also removed the ability to add/remove things from the toolbar.

It was really disappointing to see that even Matlab/Mathworks got caught up in the stupid cool/cute looking GUI revamp, while compromising the usability. There were some minor good things, like help search on top right, but in general it was a very disappointing update.

I am going back to R2012a and will stick to it as long as possible.

Answer 12

[Dan K]

1. When I dock a figure, it makes the figure toolbar virtually useless, since it becomes a tab on ribbon. For me there are a few specific issues with this. One I dock my figures on the right hand side of my screen (which means that the zoom, pan, etc controls are all on the far side of the screen from my figures) And, I often want access to both those tools and the editor tab of the ribbon at the same time! There should be an option to doc the figure toolbar in the figure window. I know this seems minor to some, but IT IS SERIOUSLY IMPACTING MY ABILITY TO GET MY WORK DONE! (Sorry, I'm done shouting now).
2. Has space become so precious that there's no longer room for the undock icons in the environment tabs?
3. The new help system stinks (I know others have said it and I've voted for every one of those posts too.) I mean, seriously: a pop up contents directory tree (and it's slow to boot)!
4. I'm not vision impaired! I don't need my icons to be nearly 10% of the vertical space on my monitor! I actually have a use for that space.
5. I don't know if anybody else has this problem but the report buttons on the current folder toolbar don't work (although the reports accessed from the drop down menu do).

[Sean de Wolski]

(5) Define "not work"? Does something come up? Etc...

[Dan K]

Nothing... not a twitch... nada. I have submitted a bug report on this one.

[Sean de Wolski]

Yeah, I am able to reproduce that when the current folder toolbar is below the toolstrip. If I right-click on one of the icons and "move toolbar inside current folder panel" then life is good.

Interestingly life is good as long as it's there. When I move it back to under the toolstrip it works until I click something else. Then it quits working again.

Answer 13

[Daniel Shub]

I will preface my answer with I haven't tried 2012b yet, but I have read the release notes and some reviews. The disappointment in the major version release not including much new functionality and "only" a major interface overhaul, makes me want to express why I "buy" MATLAB. I should point out that technically I have never paid for MATLAB out of my own pocket, but I have paid for it from my grants and advocated my university to buy a TAH license.

I "buy" software maintenance for MATLAB because of the IDE. I believe the MATLAB IDE is miles ahead of any IDE, especially of any FOSS IDEs, for Python and Octave (languages that I think are comparable to MATLAB). The MATLAB IDE is so good, that I rarely use Emacs anymore when writing MATLAB code (which is not the case for any other language that I write in). The last feature addition to the MATLAB language that I have really benefited from is the overhaul to OO system that occurred 5+ years ago and before that it was the ability to use JAVA (my guess is the MEX interface was also huge, but MEX was already/always there by the time I needed it). I can imagine the move to HG2, when and if it happens, might be of similar importance. I would happily pay for they upgrades. The improvements to the JIT, memory management, multi-core processing and the additional functions are nice, but none would make me upgrade. The IDE seems to be continuously getting better and every release in the 7.x series seemed to make the IDE just a little bit slicker.

So while I wish TMW would improve the MATLAB language (or ideally make it open source), I appreciate there efforts to improve the IDE. I can only hope that the ribbon is not a step back.

[Jan]

While it has been trivial to enable "dbstop if all error" in the "Debug" menu of Matlab 6.5, I still do not understand the Matlab 7+ multi-level debug menu anymore. Therefore I started to use the command window only to set the debug levels.

I never used shortcuts and the start-menu only to activate a new version of my help files. I miss the possibility to insert my own entries in the context menu of the command window. As workaraound I've inserted some code in "edit.m" which opens the Windows Explorer, if the inputs is a folder, such that I can hit the "Open" menu for a selected folder name. But a dedicated menu entry would be better.

Matlab 5.3 had user-defined commands, which could by activated in the editor. These commands could insert text at the cursor position and access the contents of the current selection. After this power has been lost in 6.5 I stopped looking for newer equivalent solutions. Now we have the undocumented FEX: EditorMacro.

Matlab does not offer a neat method to manage working with different projects, see Answers: Path management. The raw interface to the source control systems is lean. E.g. when a project is developped by 5 programmers it is not trivial to highlight the changes applied yesterday by programmer C.

I have found a nice monospaced font, which is displayed with a high contrast and sharp in R2009a. Unfortunately R2011b scales the font by some percent and I assume some font smoothing is applied, such that the characters look slobbery.

I like Matlab's IDE and I see some points where improvements are possible. Ribbons do not belong to these points.

I'm very curious to experiment with Apps. Are they compatible with ealier Matlab versions?

[Sean de Wolski]

@Jan, they are new for 12b and not backward compatible :( to my knowledge.

[Ryan G]

Often there are options to download the GUI instead of the app in the file exchange.

Answer 14

[Image Analyst]

I can't figure out how to get my shortcuts transferred over. I did right click and tell it to display the shortcut ribbon, but my shortcuts from R2011b are not there. I tried the trick I gave in http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/44254-how-can-i-save-my-matlab-shortcuts about copying over the shortcuts.xml file from C:\Users\ImageAnalyst\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2012a to C:\Users\ImageAnalyst\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2012b, but it didn't work this time. I have 6 or 7 shortcuts and I'd rather not recreate them by copying and pasting. Any ideas?

[Star Strider]

In addition to the Shortcut porting problem IA noted, I find ‘Help’ to be significantly less helpful than in previous releases. (I use Help often because of all the complexities in the various functions and function changes between versions.) In addition to Kevin's comments about Help for the Editor having disappeared, the toolbox ‘tree’ in the left panel of Help that I always found so useful no longer exists. That makes browsing — and discovering new ways to do things — more difficult.

It is also more difficult to actually read the Help entries. The various topic titles within each Help entry seem to be the same size and font as their descriptions, making it a challenge to find the various topics. The titles blend in with the descriptions.

Please bring back the 2012a version of Help!

—————

EDIT: Posted (in duplicate) as a separate Answer per request of Jan Simon.

[Jan]

@Star Strider: Please post this as separate answer such that I can vote for it. Do you mean "help" or "doc"?

[Image Analyst]

Here's the way to do it for R2012b:

Evidently the new shortcuts XML file MUST be called shortcuts_2.xml, NOT shortcuts.xml like it used to be called..

1. Type prefsdir on the command line, then in Windows Explorer (or similar for your other operating system), go to that folder.
2. Copy your shortcuts.xml file from your old MATLAB version "prefsdir" folder to the new "prefsdir" folder.
3. Rename the existing, new shortcuts_2.xml to shortcuts_2_original.xml.
4. Rename your shortcuts.xml to shortcuts_2.xml.
5. Restart MATLAB R2012b and all your old short cuts will be there.

[Star Strider]

@Jan Simon: Thank you! I will!

I originally meant ‘Help’ — the Help browser that comes up with the ‘View product documentation (F1)’ — but I just discovered that in 2012b, ‘doc’ brings up the Help browser as well. (I rarely use ‘doc’, preferring the 2012a and previous versions Search option in the Help browser.)

@Image Analyst: Thank you for updating that discovery.

[Jan]

@Star Strider: I use "help" for the text, which appears after "help plot", and "doc" accordingly.

Answer 15

[Yuri K]

It took me a while to figure out how to do "Paste to Workspace" in the new version. No menu, no good help about it.

I could do it with

uiimport('-pastespecial')

and finally found that Ctrl-V is just focus dependent.

Another twist was when I tried to paste a column of strings with IDs, like 'ID6', 'ID15', 'ID23' etc. (copied to clipboard from an Excel file), to get a cell array. To my surprise I got the output as a cell array of doubles with ID prefix cut away. There is no option to eliminate such behavior. A good example of over-smart system, isn't it?

I know I can code to read the file with xlsread to control it better. But sometime you need a quick and dirty way just to get data in. Worked perfectly fine in older versions. (Well, I've updated from 2011a.)

I'll be happy to learn if I miss something obvious.

Answer 16

[Todd Welti]

I have been using the Office ribbons for several years. I remember hearing when they came out that "It sucks at first, but you'll get used to it, and learn to like it". Five years later and I still hate it. i won't repeat all the points made in previous posts here but I have a question. Do software engineers ever do an analysis of how many clicks are required to complete a given action (with and wothout ribbon)? It just seems to me that with the Office ribbon, I'm generally finding myself making one or two more clicks (and more mouse movement around the screen) for each task than I did before. That might not sound like much but it is a real annoyance when you are trying to go fast. I personally dont like the idea of being a software tester for Mathworks to "see if it is better". I'll be sticking with the old version or possibly switching to a Matlab clone rather than use the ribbon

Quite honestly folks, I feel a bit insulted that Mathworks thinks I need a pretty icon to help me find a menu command. I can read, plus I know where they are (were). It just adds visual distraction, which there is enough already.

I would love to see Mathworks listen to their customer base, and ASK them if they want an Office ribbon. How about a poll, guys???

[Jan]

@Todd: We have to take into account, that Matlab is not Microsoft Office. While I agree, that the MS-ribbons still steal my time, it is important to test, how TMW has implemented this GUI method. Did you test R2012b personally?

As far as I understood, TMW did ask a certain number of test users and the decision for ribbons is based on exhaustive tests and comparisons.

[Thomas Hoffend]

I would like to "hear" (read) a statement directly from TMW that verifies that. Exhaustive tests on employees of TMW do not count :D

Answer 17

[Clay Fulcher]

I am going to return to R2012a. I have told people for years that Matlab is the best software invented by man, and that the Help system in Matlab was one of the best features of the code. I have to eat my words, because the new system stinks. Sorry, but that's the way I see it.

[Andreas Goser]

My team reported a couple of difficulties too and it seems they are addressed with R2013a. Check out the now availabe PreRelease!

[Ryan G]

You have to remember the brand new system will be enhanced over time. Look back at the help system from releases long ago. I was stuck on 7a for a long time and the difference between that system and later releases was dramatic.

I agree with Andreas, check out the new release, make comments and enhancement requests and expect improvements in future releases.

Answer 18

[Maxwell]

The user interface, specifically the ribbon, is a huge step backwards for the Mathworks. I do not understand why you chose to make the user interface more complicated. The menu bar user interface paradigm that has been part of every successful windowing system is useful because common tasks can be performed the same way across applications. With your ribbon system, it has become incredibly annoying to figure out how to perform very common tasks. For instance, how does one revert to the saved version of a file? Clicking on 'open' reveals no such option, and there is none under save either. I find myself clicking around through your multiple panes, struggling to find buttons that did not need to be moved. At the very least you ought to make it possible to disable the ribbon and I think that you ought to reconsider this terrible design decision.

Answer 19

[Jacob Shea]

I'm late to the kvetching party, as I've only just installed 2013a last night. But I am compelled to echo many of the criticisms made in this thread (particularly the comments of Thomas Hoffend).

The ribbon UI style in general takes a lot of criticism, but ultimately I don't really care whether things are in drop-down menus or icon toolstrips. Unfamiliarity is fleeting; I can adapt. And in many cases (save, open, etc), sure, I'd rather click an icon than click through drop-down menus. But here is what I do care about in a MATLAB UI:

(1) Efficiency of screen real estate

I dock everything into one window (command history, current folder, command line, editor, figure -- all in separate tiles). That is by far the most effective layout for me. So space is at a premium, even on a large monitor. It is utterly unacceptable for the toolstrip to take up 1/10 of the screen. I see suggestions from MathWorks folks that it can be hidden, but hiding the toolstrip merely doubles my clicks and mouse strokes. That sounds like nitpicking unless, like me, you spend entire days/weeks/months clicking and mousing in MATLAB.

At minimum there should be an option for small tool icons, spread horizontally; I don't need the Open icon to take up 3 times more space than the Print icon. I don't need a group label telling me that New/Open/Save are "File" commands. A disk icon means "Save" in every piece of software, I don't need it to be labeled, use hover-text if you must. The toolstrip should be customizable. I have never once, in 15 years of heavy use, used New>Variable; I certainly don't need a dedicated icon for it now. You've basically locked the toolstrip into 'novice mode'. How could you not foresee experienced users being irritated by that?

(2) Efficiency of navigation

During my typical usage of MATLAB, I am alternately coding and using the debug tools in the Editor tile or generating plots and using the figure tools in the Figure tile. In doing so, there are prolonged repetitions of mouse movements between the tile and its accompanying toolbar. Relocating all toolbars away from their respective tiles results in a significant and incredibly frustrating delay. Similarly, a customizable toolbar (Quick Access) is a fine idea -- unless it's permanently anchored to the upper right corner. At minimum, the toolstrips should be dockable to their associated tiles. Each being customizable would be gravy.

Window controls (max,min,dock) are now relegated to drop down arrow icons. The tiny individual icons of the prior design took up the same real estate that the new drop down icon now inhabits. Clicks and mouse strokes to use these controls have simply been doubled.

(3) Consistency

For many many releases now, everything in the UI has been dockable and tileable and resizable however the user wishes. This continues to be a great strength of the MATLAB UI. Your implementation of the new ribbon toolstrip is completely inconsistent with that approach. It cannot be moved, it cannot be resized, it cannot be docked to the appropriate tile. The only flexibility of the new toolstrip design is the Quick Access toolstrip, which itself cannot be moved, resized, or docked.

Similarly, the benefit of an icon toolstrip -- identifiability and accessibility in a single click -- is not reflected in other UI changes. The individual sub-window controls (formerly very reminiscent of an icon toolstrip) have been relegated to drop-down menus beneath a nondescript down triangle. So, you got rid of drop-down menus in favor of icon toolstrips in one place, but replaced an existing icon toolstrip with a new drop-down menu in another place. What?

...

I will be reverting to 2012a, which is vastly more effective for the way I use MATLAB. Ironically, I was auto-emailed a "MathWorks Software Maintenance Service Renewal Quote" shortly after installing 2013a. Seeing that I will be rolling back to 2012a, it makes my maintenance renewal decision an easy (and cheap) one.

Answer 20

[Laurens]

Please add me as another datapoint for the dissatisfaction with the move to the "Ribbon UI". I have previously studied UI during my computer science degree.

Having been an MS Office user for a few years, I still find Ribbon interfaces neither intuitive nor productive. Research has shown that often only complete beginners get much benefit from the ribbon interface.

Not Intuitive: icons are rarely good indications of actions. What should "create a new variable" look like as an icon? Even the new file icon is a large '+', which to me suggests "Add", rather than new. Words in menus are pretty good at describing the action

Not Productive: The Ribbon takes up a lot of space with its aforementioned deficient icons. Being able to minimize the ribbon with a control at top right, then have to re-open the ribbon and move all the way to the top left to access most of the commands is inefficient as well, compared to the pull-down menu of old.

[Sean de Wolski]

You can also minimize it by double clicking the tabs.

[Jan]

@Sean: And to be complete, TMW can also give us back the compact and useful interface. Here "can" should mean "could" and "has the power to".

[Laurens]

@Sean - reiterating what Jan said, yes it's possible. I can also plot things in Excel. The point is that for many users I suspect that the ribbon is a huge step backwards.

Even for the editor we get weird icons that try to illustrate "Smart Indent" compared to the old menu that just said "Smart Indent" - I can read faster than I can decode the 2013a UI artist's interpretation of a "Smart Indent".

Everyone I speak to that uses Matlab on a frequent basis at university (I only use it occasionally) has refused to upgrade due to the nonsensical UI change.

Answer 21

[Antonio Napoli]

The toolstrip is very ugly and unuseful.

Answer 22

[Matt Tearle]

I've had quite a while to play with it. There was a little reorientation time, but I really like it now. I admit that I have a nice big screen at work, so the real estate issue Oleg mentioned isn't a problem for me.

I like the default location -- at the top -- of the filenames in the Editor (when you have multiple files open). I don't like the default location of the Quick Access Toolbar; I moved it to "Below Toolstrip", and that makes me happier.

There are still a few actions that I'm getting used to. Saving a file, for some reason, still messes with me! I guess I just got so used to the save button at the top of the Editor.

OK, I'll say it: I like Apps. Having a way to share GUIs with a single file and run with a single click is nice. Even nicer is that you don't have to monkey with paths or changing directory.

But the biggest plus for me is the new Import Tool. I may forget how to use