I have been using the standard Chart but recently changed to the Easy Chart to gain the automated functionality it provides. It is lacking some capabilities that I would really like to see added as soon as possible. FYI, I am using the Historical Mode on the Easy Chart.
First, the Pens box, where you select the pens you want displayed. It has no capability to change the background and foreground colors. This is not a problem if your chart background is a lighter shade. But when you use a darker shade, or totally black background, you can just barely see the check marks in their boxes (see Pens.jpg below). Also, the foreground color needs to be selectable instead of having to use the foreground color of the chart itself. Since you can change the border color of this box, it should be fairly simple to expose the foreground and background properties of the Pens box also.
Second, the built in Date Range component has no property for the Editor Background, as the stand-alone Date Range component does. Again, with a darker background color on the Easy Chart, a light foreground color is needed. The default color of the Editor appears to be white, so the date range text in the editor is virtually invisible (see DateRange.jpg below) as the text in it uses the Easy Chart’s foreground color. If the Editor background color property were exposed, it could be changed to allow the text to be seen. Ideally, both the foreground and background properties should be exposed.
Third, the stand-alone Date Range component has the ability to change the Outer Range Start and Outer Range End properties. Not so on the one embedded in the Easy Chart. This leads to the inability to programmatically set the outer ranges when a button is clicked, such as a button that shows the last day of data. Whatever the outer ranges were set to in the designer is all you get at runtime. This results in something like what you see in DateRange.jpg below. If the last day button is selected, you are viewing data in the chart that is just a small part of the outer range, which was set in the designer to show a one month range.
Fourth, it would be nice to have the ability to order the pens in the Pens box by something other than Alphabetized order, as the Alphabetize Pens property allows. Perhaps another field in the Pens dataset called SortOrder would work.
I really like the automated features of the Easy Chart, but these limitations have already raised complaints from my customers, so I have informed them that I would put in a change request with you guys.
Thanks for your time.
