OK, but needs work

I bought this to generate graphs that I could then re-draw with Fireworks for software reporting mockups. I wanted to avoid the complexities of Excel — I didn’t need a spreadsheet, I needed charts. Well, for $5.99 I guess I got what I paid for. I would have paid 2 or 3 times this much for a really good chart/graph application though.

This one needs some work on the UI and its user interactions.

There should be no restrictions on labels. Why does it tell me I can’t use a colon or an ampersand in the label? There are no calculation involved there, so it should allow anything to be a label.

There are 3 panes, but the one where you add data can’t be manually resized. It’s a weird experience to rezise the far left or right borders and not have that data pane resize.

There needs to be a refresh control so I can see the chart when I want to, as I go.

The pie chart symbol above each column is for the color picker. A relatively large icon like this, takes up space and is distracting and this one doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean.

And the most maddening this about this is lack of copy and paste! I can’t copy a label from one row and paste it into another (to alter it slightly or whatever). That’s THE most basic control, I can believe it was left out. When you copy and paste you get “Copy chart to Other Apps.” Huh?

I’m assuming that this is a Windows app that has been ported to the Mac and as these things usually go, not very well. Anyway, for $5.99, what did I expect? At least it does work, even if it’s not intuitive and follows no UI standard that I’m aware of.

Nocturne9 about Chart Maker Pro