I was installing 13 and it has been a blast, having lost of new options and stuff.
But I got to thinking about the install. I had to revert to a blank slate as the upgrade made a mess of things.
First, nothing went WRONG, it just was a mess of old and new, themes, toolbars, icons...
For me, and I guess others that are eagerly awaiting this new version will click through the installer as fast as I did and end up in "limbo" with a littlebit from the old and a littlebit from the new.
I propose therefore a third option in the installer.
"Install with default settings for the new version, but keep passwords, ftp-information."
Then let iconsets be set to a lower priority than the standard new one, and do the same with the toolbars. Views a other custumination can be loaded by a backup.
Then people will see all the new good things in the new version FIRST and not have a hole lot of mess to wade through as I did.
If you clicked through as fast as possible, would an extra option have helped? 
The upgrade process should convert existing themes and will only, by default, modify existing toolbars if they haven’t been edited by the user. That should produce reasonable results in most cases.
But there may still be ways we can improve it. Let us know the details if there’s something the upgrade process didn’t handle well.
If you want to reset to a default configuration after installing 13, you can do that via Settings > Backup & Restore > Reset. But our aim is that you should not need to.
It would have helped if the "extra option" was the default one.
Default option: Clean slate, but with the ftp information and other non-gui saved. (and an backup done in the background)
Option: As today, keep Dopus13 as close as possible to what you had in Dopus12.
Option: Backup and all that spesial goodnes.
But I see you point very well. I am afraid that dopus 12 will not see all the good things with dopus 13 beacuse the installation will mimik the old configuration by default.
Maybe Upgrade Installs could get an extra menu and/or toolbar named "New in 13" where stuff get's referenced that is new in 13 but would simply not show up. I for example spent half an hour finding the "Install Script" stuff in Settings because in my upgrade Install it was not there. You can then drag stuff from this extra menu to your lovingly handcrafted own menu structure that survived the upgrade and delete the 13 specific helper menu/toolbar afterwards?
This also might be a "package" that people could quickly install after the fact. Might save you a support mail or two. And it also is some clever marketing, showing what niceties you have included.
Then everyone else would be screaming at us that they lost their configs. 
We're not going to make a new version wipe everyone's entire configs by default. It's much easier to reset a config after installing the update than it is to recreate a config that was wiped without realising what the default option was.
Customize > Default Toolbars, then move the slider on the left. It'll highlight things added in different versions, which can be dragged to your toolbars (if you don't want to factory reset them entirely).
There's also a full list of new/changed toolbar buttons within the detailed release notes:
You can also reset one or all toolbars to factory defaults, either during the update process or afterwards. (Toolbars which have never been edited are always reset to the new versions when updating. Ones which have been edited aren't reset by default, but can be with a few clicks during or after the update.)
OK, what the heck. That's a freaking cool feature I never knew existed. Just amazing!
That is... awesome. But so very hidden.
The upgrade dialog tells you about it, unfortunately it seems like people don't like to read things we put in front of them 
Maybe have some text revealing, letter after letter, effect applied to all these texts. Plus Next button disabled until all the text is revealed. This should kind of force people to read...
The bigger the sign, the easier it gets overlooked. Guilty of this myself 
I do believe, when I finally install DO13, that I'll start from scratch. I asked a similar question earlier this year which led me to spend time screen-capturing all my settings (yes, it took a while!). It's not for everyone, I know, but after all this time I feel it's best for us. We also have 2 licenses so I'll be able to do 1 while still having the other to refer to, in case.
You can run v12 in a Sandbox or from a USB drive for easy comparison.
I didn't know that. So, I would just install DO12 to a USB drive & use my existing certificate? That's it?
Your license needs to include USB export. I find it very practical and the price is more than fair. Otherwise - that's it
Although you can't run the USB version at the same time as an installed version (which ever one is started first wins, and the other one will just ask the first copy to open a new window). So if you want it for direct comparison a sandbox might be a better choice.
Thanks Jon.
I think I did a pretty comprehensive job of capturing all the settings and customizations, so I'll probably just wing it from there once I purchase and install the upgrade.
Keep up the great work!