Small Irritants League Table - VOTE NOW!

[leehack]

The thread to list small irritants you would like fixed (here) has been around for about 3 months now, so about time to collate the numbers and take a look at what's the most popular requests from people, particularly with a new version of the software on the horizon.

I think the overall number of people voting has been a bit disappointing, not sure if that is a general apathy towards these things or if the process isn't the best or maybe the software does not have many small irritants. It's really important that when actinic present us with a vehicle like this, that we use it fully, so i'd urge anyone who has a small annoyance or an issue with the application, to please list it and vote. They can only act upon what we tell them and we have been assured this list will be considered.

The top issues that people have voted on as items they'd like fixed are as follows:

1. Returning to the same page after a page preview (here) - 17 votes
2. Delete key does not work in various places (here) - 17 votes
3. All dialogues to be sizeable and remain that size (here) - 15 votes
4. Internal page preview not rendering as the browser does (here) - 10 votes
5. Enable the difference between BST and GMT to be seen on order times (here) - 8 votes
6. Remove cgi-bin linking across all marketing lists in favour of plain URLs (here) - 7 votes
7. Get content tree to remember its state after snapshots or purges (here) - 6 votes
8. Ensure actinic application has an icon in the taskbar (here) - 6 votes

In line with above being highlighted as the top 8 issues, i think it will be a good idea to have a poll on them, where you can only choose one that you'd like to be fixed and we can all see what most people would choose as there most important (irritating) to be fixed.

What we tell Actinic via this poll is key, it does not mean that without question those irritants at the top will be fixed, but it gives a clear message what we as the users of the software, do want fixed the most. They will then make a business decision on what they can do.

So vote away, let's see how it works!

[leehack]

3 pretty clear things we want fixed then, shame we've not got more votes, but i think it shows a trend even with those small numbers.

[brucet]

I'm hoping to get 1 & 2 fixed in v11 at least, and maybe 4

Making literally all the dialogs resizeable would be a huge task. I mean man-weeks of work - it has to be done individually, one by one, and is quite laborious. And for most of them, not a lot of benefit for the amount of development time IWHT.

Eg how much benefit is there really in making the site selection on startup dialog resizeable? Or the sync server settings, or the change password dialog?

Which ones are most in need of doing?

[meden]

Which ones are most in need of doing?

For me the Section, Subsection and Product dialogue boxes are paramount for resizing - or at leaset making a lot bigger than they currently are

[Steve G Griggs]

Editing CSS.

I would go along with Mick's choice of dialog boxes. I agree that some would be of little or no benefit to change.
Also an irritant for me is once I have opened the CSS popup in the design tab, I can't just minimize it so I can carry on working until I need to edit the CSS again without closing, and opening the thing again. Thats a pain when you know you're going to be doing a fair bit of work on css, and then checking in a browser. It can be quite a repetitive process. I have tried to edit the CSS in notepad but never seem to find the right file.....

[malbro]

Eg how much benefit is there really in making the site selection on startup dialog resizeable? Or the sync server settings, or the change password dialog?

Which ones are most in need of doing?

Can the boxes retain the size set as well, for example on the product page under general you can move the bottom position of the lower box (where the product data is) reducing the size of the lower empty box but it always returns to the original position once you leave the product and come back. I also agree with Mick's choice

[Darren B]

I'm hoping to get 1 & 2 fixed in v11 at least, and maybe 4

Making literally all the dialogs resizeable would be a huge task. I mean man-weeks of work - it has to be done individually, one by one, and is quite laborious. And for most of them, not a lot of benefit for the amount of development time IWHT.

Eg how much benefit is there really in making the site selection on startup dialog resizeable? Or the sync server settings, or the change password dialog?

Which ones are most in need of doing?

Maybe if these had been started on a few years back when this issue raised its head then the mountain might not have been so big, i dont think everyone is expecting all of then to be but the most common / often used would be a start

[Darren B]

3 pretty clear things we want fixed then, shame we've not got more votes, but i think it shows a trend even with those small numbers.

it is a shame Lee i agree, plenty moan but no one placed an x in the box, although i think the list could ahve been a little longer but it is also a bit of a problem as some issues get fixed between releases

[brucet]

TBH I don't think we could manage more than 3 or 4 in the next release anyway. It's already quite a challenging development for us, with some major new features that are not easy to implement.

Maybe if these had been started on a few years back

Actually they were started in v10. The Product Details and a number of other fixed-size dialogs were made resizeable, Actinic now consistently (AFAIAA) remembers the size of resized dialogs, and several cramped elements including the Product Full Description were enlarged.

So we've already started a rolling programme which I want to continue, but I want to make sure we prioritise where there is the greatest need / demand.

[Mike Hughes]

First time I've seen this thread which is odd as it was created on the 7th Jan. I don't know how I missed it but apologies for not voting earlier.

Mike

[Darren B]

Actually they were started in v10. The Product Details and a number of other fixed-size dialogs were made resizeable, Actinic now consistently (AFAIAA) remembers the size of resized dialogs, and several cramped elements including the Product Full Description were enlarged.

I accept some have changed Bruce, but V10 is when it started and is still new, these irritants have been around a lot longer than V10 which was what my post was drawing attention too.

Removing the header and footer text box from the site options and putting it somewhere else would be a great idea IMHO or make this a more use friendly field. I find myself using notepad and copying and pasting.

Every version i hope someone will actually fix the email subject description for the shipped email when you use auto complete. This was added to the bug list by CD however its still there. At some point, no matter how minor it might be, someone has to make the decision to put them to bed, mop up the long over due irritants if you like. I cant quite remember if this was V6 or V7

I am not dismissing the work you guys do but just maybe you lot are spread to thin and at some time all these things will need clearing. If the pile keeps getting bigger then your forever going backwards. How many snippets of code has Norman given you guys over the years and asked for it to be written into the core of the program? Free software development i would jump at the chance

[leehack]

Ooooh we're up to 30 votes now, have you voted yet?

[brucet]

Update on progress

Here is an update on what we've been able to achieve so far in response to these requests:

1. Returning to the same page after a page preview - Fixing in v11

2. Delete key does not work in various places - In v11, fixed all instances I could find reported will be fixed, and a couple of others that we trapped ourselves. I can’t guarantee we have caught them all, but if more are reported in future we will fix those as well.

3. All dialogues to be sizeable and remain that size - Fixed some in v10, more in v11. See below for the full list*.

If we've missed any that are important to you, please mention them by name and I will add them to the future list. Be specific, phrases like 'the most commonly used' mean different things to different people, and I've given up trying to guess. (We won’t fix them all because they have to be done manually, one by one – a huge task, and in some cases pointless. Eg Marketing | Google Analytics – why would you need to resize that?)

4. Internal page preview not rendering as the browser does - Fixing in v11. You will be able to choose compatibility with any IE version, up to and including the latest version you have installed. Default will be IE9.

5. Enable the difference between BST and GMT to be seen on order times - Not yet fixed. Of all the requests it was one of the most complex and risky, affecting complicated areas of the product.

6. Remove cgi-bin linking across all marketing lists in favour of plain URLs - Not yet fixed, but in v11 we are adding nofollow tags to the links.

7. Get content tree to remember its state after snapshots or purges - Planned for a v11 maintenance release.

8. Ensure actinic application has an icon in the taskbar - Not yet fixed. ATM we have not been able to reproduce this problem, and don’t know the cause.


The following issues from the original thread are also being fixed in v11:

- Viewing the order line of a completed order returns it to Pending

- A better way of automatically naming page names on copied sections. (Copied sections will be numbered instead of named 'copy_of_copy_of_ section.html' etc.)

- Replace automatic _ with - on page names. (Fixed in v11. New sites will default to the hyphen character. Upgrading sites will have the option switch to hyphens, or continue using underscores for consistency. We won’t rename existing pages because that would damage search rankings.)

And the following were fixed in v10.0.3:

- MOTO ‘shopped before’ button loads a list of all customers without being asked

- Product descriptions are truncated in ‘order shipped’ emails

- Refund dialog not correctly pre-populated with amount due (Actinic Payments)

- Commit dialog not properly pre-populated for back-orders (Actinic Payments)


* Panels & dialogs made resizeable

In v10:
'Product Details' panel
File | External Links
Marketing | Product Groups
List Layout Settings
Marketing | Customer Groups
(In addition, some were made larger that were difficult to make resizeable; and where some were already resizeable but the size was not preserved, this was also fixed)

In v11:
'Section Details' panel
Settings | Search Settings
Settings | Duplicates Field Configuration
Settings | Locations

[leehack]

Great news Bruce, thanks for the update, puts into perspective how many things we communicated to you have indeed had some action on them, i'm personally very happy with that, particularly given the new features due in v11.

Is this a regular exercise we will now do you think? seems to have worked IMO, we told you what annoys us and you fixed as many of them as you could, that's a good forward thinking policy IMO and exactly what i'd want from you. Top marks from me.

PS - the icon disappearing is when you click to open actinic and then click to open another program while actinic is opening, actinic opens in the background but you get no icon. However if you alt-tab, you can select it and the icon then appears. What happens sometimes for those that do not know alt-tab between programs is that you get told it is already running, but it has no icon on the taskbar.

[gabrielcrowe]

Number 6:
http://www.gabrielcrowe.co.uk/plugin...bypass-cgibin/