Obviously you're being quite argumentative. You're more than welcome. Picking at our words and statements in our replies and trying to make something out of them, whether there's any foundation to it or not. We are not going to get into that area. We offer a tremendous amount of capability and more importantly quality for 22 USD. Sierra Chart fully supports vertical scaling/scrolling for each chart region by clicking and dragging on the price scale. And vertical scaling/Scrolling is quite different than horizontal scrolling. Vertical scaling or scrolling is generally limited to the extent to which you would go. Horizontal scrolling can be very long with the action that a user will perform with it. What if you want to scroll an intraday chart that contains six months of one minute data to the very middle. How would you do that rapidly without a scrollbar? It simply is not intuitive. With SC you can do this in a matter of one second. How fast can you do that with CQG? The discussion at this point is not whether we will have the capability or not. Eventually it will be added. So the open question is do you want to see a chart without a scrollbar or with a scrollbar? Readers are welcome to post their desire either way.
Come on now, so you're saying that you can even determine that hiding a scrollbar is not available until you make a payment. We offer free trial. Did you ask support?
I have been with Sierra Charts since May 09. I have seen continual improvements, user suggestions implemented, quick responses to questions and issues. I personally am very happy with the software. I have been around the block with most software packages and for me SC and IB have been a solid combination. regards, Bruce
With all due respect sir, I'm really not trying to be argumentative. If anything I'm frustrated because for a brief moment this afternoon I was actually thinking that your software was a great fit for a very specific need that I had and literally, in my mind this is a relatively ridiculous discussion to be having, simply because I don't think its the job of the software provider to be telling traders what they do and don't need and what they do and don't want. Its usually the traders telling the software engineers what they need. If you don't want to offer it thats fine, but to assert that its a low priority item that nobody wants and that its on the bottom of your to do list right behind "all the important stuff" just spoke volumes thats all. I never said you didn't. I just said you clearly haven't paid much attention to almost any of the competition out there (for a very long time I might add) if you have never seen a chart without a scrollbar and have no idea how they are currently being implemented. Maybe the way you've implemented it but not the way it should be implemented properly. The vertical price axis for any given instrument goes from zero to theoretical infinity and that is a much larger window for potential scrolling (and scaling actually) than loading up several thousand bars of data (or even a couple hundred thousand). Assuming that a trader is just unlikely to want to scroll or scale beyond what you deem is reasonable or appropriate does not mean that you've implemented vertical scrolling properly. See, this is the type of question which makes me think that you don't really understand how traders use your own software. A trader would never want to go to the middle of their data... thats something a programmer would think that a trader would want to do. A trader starts at the hard right edge and works his way across the chart from left to right.... a trader has to touch and feel his charts... and that process is different to each trader. But I can tell you that 9 times out of 10, you're not jumping around from data segment to data segment.... you're traversing the chart in chronological order... bar by bar.... from left to right... and not only would paging the data in chronological order not be a hindrance, the majority of the time it would be the preferred operation. At best a trader might want to jump all the way to the beginning of the data just to see how much data he has loaded up on his chart, but even that is usually for specific purposes like broad market scans or something along those lines. That can be handled by just using the HOME and END keys on the keyboard (or some mouse+click combination) to get to the beginning and end of the data. Now having said that, if you really wanted an answer to your question, here it is: faster than you can do it in SC with a scrollbar. Here's what you're missing... most of the time users are not going want to go to the "middle" of the data... most of the time you're going to want to go to a specific point in time or a specific bar. So for those instances, you just give them a hotkey. Pick any hotkey you want... pop open a modal dialog window or whatever you'd like to use... and prompt the user for the specific point in the data that they want to go to (either a date/time or a bar# or however else you think your users will want to reference their data). That is way faster than using a horizontal scroll bar anyways.... plus again, a horizontal scroll bar can NEVER get you to a specific point in time... it can only get you to a visual point in time. Sure a scrollbar will help you get to the middle of your data or the end of your data faster... but who needs that in real life very often? What if you need to go to last Wednesday at 9:35EST on a 3 minute chart? How fast can you find that exact point with a scrollbar? How fast do you think you can find that exact point with a hotkey? Also, remember, that its mostly end of day and/or swing traders that are going to traverse a lot of data like you're suggesting. Realtime traders live on the hard right edge most of the time and barely have any use for the data thats on their screen... let alone pages and pages of historical data. For those traders, why do you think they need to be staring at a scrollbar all day long that is going to be used for absolutely nothing when those pixels could be being used to make other windows on the screen slightly larger? Remember, the main thrust of my argument is that for some traders its a needless waste of valuable screen real estate. Why isn't it within the perogative of the end user whether or not they'd prefer (or need) fast and easy traversal over a huge window of data or a few extra pixels of screen space. I hope you do... I'll probably become a subscriber at that point because like I said, I would like to use your software for a very specific purpose. Why does it have to be one or the other? You allow users to customize and configure so much as it is, why is it that chart navigation and traversal is the one are where all users must use the software in the exact same way? Again, I'm not suggesting you remove the scrollbars... I'm not even suggesting that you don't have users that want it or would miss it... I think you absolutely do.... I'm just saying you also have users (or potential users) that hate and despise scrollbars and just don't happen to share your point of view that they're an intuitive and efficient way to navigate a chart OR an effective use of screen real estate.
If I was customer service at Sierracharts and it was my last day on the job here is what my response might be: Dear Sir If scrollbars are a really really really really big issue for you.... then I hardly know what to say, maybe a few weeks in the countryside, different meds regimen, some natural food, lots of water, ditch the liberal rags maybe, they make you crazy and miserable, ummm don't take the cellphone along... only talk to the pleasant and undemanding people maybe... pet a dog.. I don't know really... we do PROMISE to look into the scroll bar issue though... Yours truly customerserviceguyslastday@whatever.com
We just did a quick test to see if we could remove the scrollbar using an easy method and it worked, but then it came back after the window was resized. Apparently trying to access the scrollbar variables caused Windows to put it back. So it's not just an easy thing at the moment to remove.
That might be because in your resize code the window bit flag that controls visibility (the window in question being the scrollbar -- not the actual window) got reset somewhere (either by some of your code or by Windows). Have you tried simply unsetting the visibility bit again after you do the window resize (in your OnWindowResize callback or whatever you have it named)?
You know, as I re-read this one statement I think I figured out why its so problematic for you guys to consider implementing... I assumed you implemented the horizontal scrolling yourself and was just using the scrollbar as a visual representation of where you were in your matrix translations (as you translated the underlying data from right to left to give the appearance of scrolling)....double buffered the window DC then just bit-blitted the "visible" data to the screen. But it sort of sounds like you guys might actually get the horizontal scrolling for free just by using the scrollbar (and perhaps you're actually using an HScrollRegion or something similar).... and either Windows or your underlying framework is actually handling all the matrix translations and double buffering for you. There might be a compromise thats easier for you guys to consider swallowing. Instead of removing the scrollbars completely, how about just autohiding them? That way you can just toggle the visibility in your OnWindowFocusIn and OnWindowFocusOut events. The behavior would be similar to Tradestation where when the window gets focus the scrollbar becomes visible and when the window loses focus the scrollbar becomes invisible. This is not what I would consider ideal for me personally, but I would take it over nothing since it does solve the issue of wasted screen real estate since only one chart at a time (the active chart) would have a visible scrollbar. And it would also solve your concern about users being confused if they accidentally removed/hid the scrollbar on their chart, since it would automatically reappear as soon as they clicked on the chart and gave focus to that window. And of course I'm just suggesting it as an option... I'm not suggesting that it should be made the default behavior for all users.
I just fired up Sierracharts today for the first time in awhile... I had an hour or two's experience with it a couple of weeks ago... it's nice enough, I was up and running with a chart and playing with the screen trader in probably a half an hour, I'm pretty enthused with it, it's intuitive to my way of thinking, move the pointer to the price, right click.. the top choices are market orders, which is good if you are panicking [it happens], and all the other choices are clearly described.. one thing I might change is if the price choice is below the current price then gray out all the orders that don't apply and same for if the chosen price is above the current price... It has the possibility of a bracketed ENTRY... they all have the bracketed exits but I've thought of a use for a bracketed entry [get a signal, try for a better price if possible but when price starts to move, get in without the price improvement] and didn't see it until Sierracharts.. and I've tried half the software available for retailers...