Beta feedback

[Titus]

<note to mods>I have tried to submit this a few times, but I got a message saying it is too short (min 10 chars), and all the text disappeared. I try to rewrite as much as I remember now. If the other posts (same or similar title, same icon) show up somewhere, please kill them.
<note />

I tested the new 8 beta 5 briefly. First impressions are very good, thanks for the good work. There are a few areas that may need improvement.

1. Opening the online help from an NT window and then closing the browser (in my case a firefox fork) afterwards leaves residues of the browser on the NT windows. They remain until a real interaction (not just a mouse over or click) with the NT window. It is probably not the fault of the browser, since it does not happen with other apps.

2. It would be nice to have the option to require password to log on to live accounts. It can be very dangerous to have someone log into a live account, even if it is just a curious child mucking about on the computer.

3. NT7 had the option to hide the chart toolbar. NT8 help says it is possible here too, but I could not find a way to do it. Bug? It would be nice to have customizable toolbars/menus, like some other apps have, e.g. firefox.

4. Can we get back the show/hide chart trader button just like in NT7? Chart trader button (Buy, Sell, etc) dimensions and their distances are better in NT7. I almost clicked the wrong button in NT8, not something I would want to do in live trading. Could the button sizes, distances be made customizable? It would be nice to have the option to customize what buttons are shown? Eg. hide Market order buttons if one does not intend to use market orders.

5. The new user interface design is nice, and I like that it is customizable. Is there a doc of what is what in the XAML file? Please provide a tutorial/reference. I am mainly interested in reducing the window frames, changing the menu font to not bold (harder for me to read then normal font, tab size (make them smaller, so they take up less space. Item 3 above is related, as I want to keep the interface as simple as possible, I want to have only the important and frequently used things on when trading.

6. I would like to have the Custom/System colors back in the color pickers (chart background, indicator colors, etc).

7. Instrument picker is sometimes very slow, takes a few seconds to show up. It would be nice to have more flexibility with it, like displaying only the instruments, instrument lists I want to use. Currently I could not remove unwanted lists. I accidentally entered a symbol with a typo, and it stayed on the picker list. I could pin it and unpin it, but could not remove it.

Some of these suggestions may already be available, I just could not find a way to do it (help is not finished yet). If so, let me know how to do it, otherwise please take them into consideration and implement as appropriate, or feasible.

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up it's appreciated.

1. What video card do you have? NT uses windows which are rendered by the GPU not the CPU which is why you likely see a difference here. Often times updating video card drivers helps here and making sure the video card is strong enough to handle the rendering.
2. Noted.
3. It is not customizable since the toolbar is apart of the caption bar. Therefor there is nothing to hide and you have gained one row of space here already vs NT7. (Meaning NT7 with toolbar hidden is same size as NT8 with toolbar on the top.)
4. This is two seperate requests, one is to make the chart trader smaller (understood) and the other is to change the chart trader button to an on/off button. What is the reason you preferred the on/off button?
5. Docs are in progress but still will be a while. In the meantime we are taking the feedback on margin sizes which you pointed out and may look into an internal change there.
6. Improvements planned to allow you to set your own color code like you could in NT7.
7. To remove an instrument move your mouse over it and then press the DEL key on the keyboard.

[Titus]

Brett, thank you for your reply. A few clarifications below.

1. I do not know exactly what the video card is, it is not a very powerful one. It seemed adequate so far. The highest CPU load by NT I have ever seen in the task manager was 8%, if that is relevant to the CPU/GPU issue. I may upgrade the system when switching over to NT8 permanently. What are the requirements and recommendations?
There is the Display update interval setting in NT7, I keep it fairly slow. Is it still available and relevant in NT8?

3. By customizable toolbar I meant the option to add and remove tools from the toolbars as needed. For example I never use drawing tools, so I would remove those from the chart toolbar to keep it simpler. It is also useful to be able to have different toolbars (saved in templates) for live trading charts, and other chart used for trying ideas, building strategies, etc. A live chart needs hardly any tools, while a strategy development chart needs many.

4. Yes, two separate request, related to the chart trader.
- One: On/Off button. I like the On/Off button because it is where the chart trader is, easier to just click it than to find it in a menu. Many charts are on the screen but only one chart is used for trade entry. When not in a trade the visible chart trader or the button clearly marks which one is the live trade. It is a simple visual aid, if you will.
- Two: It is related to the sizes of buttons, not the size of the chart trader itself. NT8 buttons are wide, flat and too close to each other. NT7 buttons are further away, narrower and taller, closer to a square shape. It has happened on NT8 that while waiting for a trade setup to complete and hovering the mouse pointer over the Buy button, I drifted over to the sell button. This is why I think configurable button sizes and their distances (padding) would be beneficial.
Also, I do not use all buttons, I would like to hide ones I don't use. With a customizable setup, I would hide the Buy Market, Sell Market, Rev buttons, and probably keep only the Buy Bid, Sell Ask buttons. Or - to complete my Christmas wish list - have two more, new and customizable buttons: 'Buy Bid - 1 Tick' and 'Sell Ask + 1 Tick' (or any customizable N ticks).

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

No problem.

1. Currently the minimum/recommended is just a decent Direct X 11 compatible dedicated graphics card. Display update intervals are hard coded to smaller values then NT7 defaults for display update intervals.

3. Understood. Will add that to the suggestion and feature tracking.

4. Understood. Thank You for the feedback.

[NinjaTrader_DaveI]

Hi Titus,

2. I've added your vote to an existing feature request tracked under ID # SFT-2 for this request.

3. I've got that logged with tracking ID # SFT-819, so we can begin to track user demand for that feature.

4A. I've added your vote to SFT-613 for this request.

4B. I've added your vote to SFT-509 for this one.

[ShaneAU]

Hi guys could you please +1 on #3, thanks.

[NinjaTrader_DaveI]

You got it, thanks.

[Titus]

Hi Dave,

What are these SFT numbers for? What can I do with them?

[NinjaTrader_DaveI]

These are tracking numbers for user suggestions and feedback. User feedback is the starting point for our design decisions in the development process, so it's very important for us to have an organized repository of suggestions and feature requests, ordered by the number of votes for each feature, so that we can wrap our heads around which feature requests or enhancement requests are the most popular in the community.

In terms of what you can do -- users can request to add their votes to a specific tracking ID, or you can request an update on any tracking ID here in the forum or via email to our platform support team, and we can share any new information we have on the request.

[Titus]

Is there a list with SFT numbers to vote on?

Can the developers or product management be bribed with some beer to do my favorite SFTs first?
¡Viva la corrupción!

Titus
Dark Lord of Flagrant Corruption

[NinjaTrader_DaveI]

We have discussed the possibility of making these IDs publicly accessible, but for now we are happy with the current processes in place. The best way to go about it is to make a specific suggestion here on the forum, and one of us will locate the proper tracking ID and add your vote, or make a new one.