I have been experimenting with DHTMLX for quite some time and these are the features I would love to see in the framework.
- DHTMLX Combo in the DHTMLX form and by itself should have better UI when using checkboxes.
The text displayed(comboText) as value has no relationship to the checked options and it confuses people. It should be like this jquery plugin http://www.erichynds.com/examples/jquery-ui-multiselect-widget/demos/#selectedlist so that users do not need to open the dropdown to confirm what is checked.(Also it should have option to limit the number of selection text displayed because if the user selects say 20 options then displaying all of their text as comboText would clog up the UI in such case “Option1,Option2…and n others” can be shown as combotext.
a) It should have Check All/UnCheck All because in long lists its tedious for the user to browse through all the lists and uncheck/check all.
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Another limitation is with the input text in the DHTMLX form. There are some users who never read instructions on the format to be used when they enter data. An example is telephone number.
We can argue that validation prevents such entries but these people complain that its the format they use everywhere and our web form has something wrong.So if we could mask the text in a programmable format its great. Please see the example of a control that permits this
http://robinherbots.github.io/jquery.inputmask/ -
Another great scope for improvements is the Chart. DHTMLX charts are good but since charts mainly find use in analytics, it requires to be more dynamic and visually interactive. If you look at the charts in these links who offer similar frameworks the options are plenty(not in terms of number of charts but if you click on charts it allows drill down and other features which are critical in dashboards and analytics). Please see below:
https://demos.shieldui.com/web/area-chart/axis-marker
and this one especially
http://www.highcharts.com/demo/
- There could be an option called Kanban drag and drop for DHTMLX Layout cells(if they are of same dimensions). Sometimes individual users prefer some blocks of controls to be in a particular region of their screen. Now we have to code it manually. If users could drag it and arrange by themselves it could be cool(and datastore could save its position locally). Also there are some instances where it would be cool for users to be able to drap and drop objects.Please see example
http://webix.com/demos/kanban.html
I see layouts and accordion has an option to detach cells as windows which is cool about DHTMLX.
- Badges (in Bootstrap css) are a cool way for notifications. If we had an option to show badges in DHTMLX Toolbars or ribbon items it would be great. http://www.tutorialspoint.com/bootstrap/bootstrap_badges.htm
The ribbon control is brilliant and is very innovative in DHTMLX. Overall its a cool framework with a few areas of improvement. And the support provided by DHTMLX staff makes it unique among other JS frameworks. Thank you DHTMLX team for the amazing framework and tireless quality support.