Hi,
the latest update to 5.1 seems to have caused many well known features gone “missing” or being relocated. The change notes do not indicated any change except “Modern UI” and a reference to switch back to the old interface.
The main problem I personally face is ensuring maintainability of workflows wich leverage varaibles in node configarations.
Furthermore, the icons in the input field are lacking tooltips. The icon “Aa” is kindof self explaining (if you use latin characters). Hwoever, the two arrows should have a tool tip stating “inverse” or “negate”.
Adding to this, in the good old, and honestly much better interface, you could press CTRL and click on Ok to immediately execute. Neither is the Ok button displaying “Ok + Execute” but the feature has gone entirely.
The “polished” interface from my perspective feels more like a regression in many ways. Opening the node configuration also opens the config window in a very disproportional way:
I’d kindly like to point out a similar experience with another application. Wordpress switched to the highly depated Gutenberg editor some time ago. It was not well received and still is disliked by many. Whilst providing a polished interface, it offers a very poor orientation. I start to believe the new Knime interface develops into the same direction.
PS: It is also not possible to close the configuration window by pressing ESC.
PPS: I just found the option to configure flow variables for a node. It is hidden in teh context menu “Configure Flow Variables …”. Locating a configration option in a context menu instead of the actual configuration window is highly confusing. It also introduces many pojnts of failures as i.e. when using a flow varaible for the pattern input field there is no notification present, which was before, that this input field is manaed via a flow variable
On top of this the input field, which in the above screenshot is manaed by a flow varaible, is not disabled causing a UI confllict. Overall this practice is causing unnecessary confusion and UI fragmentation. There is no shortcut to the flwo variable management tag.
After tsting this unexpected “polish” I must conclude this is clearly a serious regression. The Knime settings do not allow to enforce the much better old UI. Worth to note that I have yet not switched tothe modern UI either so I was struck by suprise and feel quite disorientated and dissatisfied.
Kind regards
Mike