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| What you want to do makes perfect sense, and I think is a major oversight
| in Meta Stock to have left this feature out. Unfortunately the downfall
of
| most software applications that involve Trading is that they are
developed
| by people with expertise in Software Development not Trading!
Here, here!! After using MS 6.0 and 6.5 for a couple of months now, it is
_very_ obvious that Equis has not done any Useability testing on the
product with real-world technicians. I guess they assumed that by
emulating MS Office, they wouldn't need to Useability test it - wrong!
Examples (off the top of my head):
1. Almost impossible to create indicators that work on more than 1 price.
You have to create a composite file in the Downloader - lame! Even there
you are limited to combining just 2 prices and using simple arithmetic
operators. Try creating a chart of your portfolio - if you have more than
1 stock in it, you're in for a really hard time.
2. Downloader doesn't interact with MS Excel.
In theory, using MS Excel is a great way to get around the problem above.
But the Downloader doesn't update your Excel files, so you must update
them manually every night (yuck) or create very complicated and fragile
macros to update things for you (double yuck).
3. Doesn't save the width of your charts.
I am constantly rescaling my charts each time I load them. This is
inexcusable! When I save a chart and then reload it, I expect to see the
same thing!
4. Notes on charts don't scale when you zoom in or out.
Combine this fact with #3 above and you can forget about having nicely
maintained annotated charts.
5. Having Trend Lines and Chart Notes disappear when you switch from Daily
to Weekly mode.
Lame, lame, lame!
6. Applying a template creates a whole new chart.
That is plain wrong. Apply the template to the current chart.
7. If you print in black and white, your chart GIFs are stored in black and
white.
Like there is a correlation between people with B/W printers (everyone)
and people with B/W web sites (no one!). (I admit that this one is kind of
minor, but it is a great example of lack of useability testing.)
8. Volume bars can't change color for up/down days.
Hello? This is critical for visual volume trend analysis.
9. No vertical scrollbars or chart windows
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!
10. Saving charts does not save custom vertical axis settings.
(See comment for #9)
=================
In addition to fixing the things above, here's are some suggested
improvements:
1. Always show the Profit/Loss of any buy/sell arrows on my chart
2. Allow me to "manually" set buy/sell points on my chart
3. Create "palettes" of colors that I can apply to an existing chart.
4. Indicator functions should understand "default" parameters so I don't
have to constantly look them up.
5. Auto-draw trendlines and Support/Resistance Levels
6. Allow me to create indicators with parameters that I can a.) set in the
properties dialoag and b.) optimize in the system tester.
7. Allow me to create indicators that are visually composed of several
other indicators (kinda like MACD's 2 lines)
8. Make it trivially easy to compare the relative strength of one or more
securities/indicators.
=================
The above may make you think I hate the product - that's not true. I use
it constantly and find it of great value. Like anything I use alot though,
its faults get magnified in my mind. MS 6.5 is great in so many areas that
these seemingly minor things really detract from my overall experience and
make me question if it was useability tested at all.
Please take my ramblings as the constructive criticism they are meant to
be.
Thanks,
Chip
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