March Update - Comments Thread

[Benjamin Dyer]

Apologies, I am sure you can all sense the irony here, however we have a technical issue with the community.

We will endeavor to get the original posts back.

[guccij]

I'm saying nothing ;)

[Mike Hughes]

Sorry Ben, but I did have a good laugh at this.

Mike

[grantglendinnin]

Somebody started work early this morning - I could swear the forum was fine at 1am:rolleyes:

[OTT]

Someone got a little trigger happy then :rolleyes:

[pinbrook]

some of my posts from yesterday have gone...

they were helpful ones ;)

[leehack]

they were helpful ones ;)
It's not your opinion on them that counts lol.

[guccij]

some of my posts from yesterday have gone...they were helpful ones ;)I spotted that too - thought maybe the you had hit the delete button, or else my eyesight was worse than I realised.

[pinbrook]

annoying.... i wrote an essay on SPF and it went.... not more long replies from me for a while

mind you i noticed my post count was diminishing a while ago, much like lee's post count when he was getting close to jont - i though the mods were in removing posts that got trashed or unhelpful ones where i replied saying go search and find the answer yourself :)

[jont]

ai noticed my post count was diminishing a while ago, much like lee's post count when he was getting close to jont

I sent an email to Towers complaining I was unhappy with Lee posting more than me. What more can I say. Sorry.

[pinbrook]

We will endeavor to get the original posts back.not much luck to date then?

[gabrielcrowe]

I think that the problem is the Ninjas.

Stealthy Actinic ninjas, like the ones in Actinic enterprise.

Apart from this time, they are forum ninjas.

[grantglendinnin]

I think that the problem is the Ninjas.
Do the ninjas have pet unicorns??

[gabrielcrowe]

no, silly head.

wrong way round.

The unicorns have ninja bodyguards.

[Benjamin Dyer]

We will endeavor to get the original posts back.

A couple of posts recovered, sadly I don't have the replies (yet)

Lee:

If there are 70 bug fixes, it'd be nice to see all 70 listed, lots of the little ones can effect you more than the large ones at times, so good to read the complete list. It just creates confusion or misunderstanding if you do not see one listed particularly effecting you, how do you know if it will be fixed or not? Full transparency now, avoids disappointment later.

Are design snapshots expected to work due to some of the fixes in this version?

I think it would be a good idea to do some paid external testing in people's own environments where they work with Actinic each and every day, any mileage in that or solely in-house the focus?

---My Reply---

Firstly I am a huge fan of getting more people involved in the beta program, learning how you guys and girls use the software is a huge advantage for all involved. We had a great user test day for v9.0.3 and we learnt a huge amount, as hopefully anyone that came on the two day event will testify. I am very keen to continue this. Being together in a room allows us to see in real time what it is you are seeing, that includes representatives from support, QA and development, so I am not too sure how it would work if you were at home. That said I wont rule it out.

---End Quote---

Thanks for the answer Ben. I am not sure whether testing your end did anything extra for me personally when 9.0.3 was released, but then I have no idea what was found and changed. I do think home/office testing is another stop along that journey, until it works here, to a certain degree, all the testing whether inhouse or voluntarily is relatively useless to me. If Land Rover only test cars on their test track, they will never get to find out how they react on the roads up and down the country. People have to be paid to test at home IMO, it's the final step of the process.

Because actinic cannot work with multiple interim versions, i'd be forced to upgrade my main system (pointless testing any others or working on a separate laptop), this would occur at the start of the day and i'd then rollback to the current version at the end of the day. Most designers will have the sites they have worked on with that version all at their fingertips. The shear volume of different sites and different setups we each have at our disposal is second to none IMO.

Some more Lee:

I think each user has their own area of problems and people with set problems need to be testing the areas that are reportedly fixed to make sure they are. It's no good at the end of the process too, if you tell me a design snapshot is fixed and I show you it isn't then there needs to be enough time to still repair it for release. Some of these long standing annoying problems, need to be got rid of once and for all. The key bugs to be fixed for me are:

* Design snapshots
* Images being nuked off servers
* Intermittent parsing of CSS
* Snapshot reliability
* DMP errors

These have affected me badly, I have literally lost days because of these, not only in suffereing them but also in reporting them and talking to Actinic offline about them.

From a selfish point of view, these are all I am bothered about being fixed as they effect me on a day to day basis. I have clients who talk to me about other areas, performance of MU is always around, but the above would also satisfy many of my clients.

Imagine the above bugs were Group 1 and Group 1 had 2 external testers confirming they had in fact been fixed. Repeat that across a number of groups. I'm not so sure the global testing of it all is a good idea, i think little pockets of people who experience those actual bugs are assigned to ensure they are working fine now. A focused test in other words, not, let's throw a can of paint at a wall and see how much sticks.

grantglendinnin:

The problem with statistics is that nobody ever believes them. I am somewhat sceptic of the "8 out of 10" statistic.

On another note, it seems Actinic plan to put v9 to bed once v9.0.4 is done. My biggest concern is snapshots (both regular and design) - are these going to be fixed in 9.04? If not, it does seem like v9 has been a complete waste of time.

I'd tend to go with Lee's idea on testing. The v9.0.3 release was a farce and lost many businesses several thousand pounds due to numerous glitches that were eventually part-solved in the IMMA release, most of which caused inaccessible sites or a lot of downtime reverting to and from v9.0.3.

Finally, Actinic Payments. Forgive me for stating the obvious, it seems Actinic are stamping their authority on the PSP ground and am expecting AP to become fully integrated with Actinic to the extent where there are few alternatives. Has the Google Checkout idea been shelved to make way for a better AP integration?

Goz:

Don't you just love statistics?

I'd be interested to know who was selected to take part in that survey? Shop owners only? Developers? People with a support contract? People with a premium support contract? People who have used the support service in the last month? Anyone with a surname beginning with Q?

Based on my experience and having read posts about support, 8/10 from 2/3 of customers seems too good to be true. I hope it is true, because that would be going in the right direction, but I remain sceptical about it.

Ben - can you tell us who you class as customers for this survey?

Jon 1095

I'd still like to see more product road maps, partiucarly those based around the wish list.

Pinbrook

Since I was an attendee at the 9.0.3 testday, I wasn't terribly impressed with the progress made on the day.

I left several snapshots with Actinic and had no further feedback on them, admittedly i dodn't follow them up either- but it would have been nice to know.

One of the snapshots was from a client who hasn't yet reached the point of upgrading to 9, but said snapshot took one look at 9 and withered and died.

I have consistently been a supporter of putting the software out to a group of testers in the real world before releasing in full. Personally i would recommend at the same time as the first or second beta test that there is a test session at actinic, preferably 2 days. One day is not long enough. There needs to be a list of items to be tested (released prior to the test day) and interested parties then are invited to join the test day.

As Ben says there is much to be learned by Actinic at these events, developers may be good at their jobs, but we often see scenarios where the code is WAD (working as designed) but WAD isn't necessarily how it needs to be in the real world.

Chris Ashdown:

Good Posts Lee and Jo, Both make a lot of sence to me, but do also please Please Please fully check MU out as well

[Benjamin Dyer]

not much luck to date then?

Yep, got a few back.

[jont]

Being together in a room allows us to see in real time what it is you are seeing, that includes representatives from support, QA and development, so I am not too sure how it would work if you were at home. That said I wont rule it out.

It wouldn't cost me a days holiday when the 2nd day was cancelled at the last minute :mad:

[Mike Hughes]

We anticipate v9.0.4 will be available for beta testing in the coming weeks. If you would like to take part you can subscribe by emailing v9.beta (at) actinic.co.uk.


There seems to be a problem with that address. Does it exist?

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: 9.0.4 beta
Sent: 02/04/2009 16:18

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

'v9.beta(fudgethe@)actinic.co.uk.' on 02/04/2009 16:18
The requested operation failed.


Mike

[malbro]

There seems to be a problem with that address. Does it exist?



Mikemight be that last full stop after .uk, the address should work as I sent them an email and got a response

[Mike Hughes]

Yup, that was it. I got an out of office reply to the corrected address.

Oops.

Mike

(I blame it on the copy and paste)