bugs?

[pnagames]

Darren

maybe we can help you remember.

give us a clue

[Darren B]

All i can say is they have a magical wish list, you enter your wishes and within the year you get what you wished for, except it actually resembles nothing like you imagined it would - thats the magic

but the name alludes me

[gabrielcrowe]

Yes, I know the one you mean.

Is that the one that does the software with the dodgy interface?

[Darren B]

Yes, I know the one you mean.

Is that the one that does the software with the dodgy interface?

PMSL

[pnagames]

Yes, I know the one you mean.

Is that the one that does the software with the dodgy interface?

my problem is that i can think plenty of companies

[gabrielcrowe]

disclaimer:
In no way am i referring to Actinic catalog when I say the term 'dodgy' and the word' Interface'.

Any similarities between Actinic software and the bizzarre behaviours of 'Company X' are entirely coincidental.

[Darren B]

you mean OS commerce

[gabrielcrowe]

so, can we have anyone from Actinic towers comment on the public being able to access the status of upcoming features?

it'd go a long way towards instilling company confidence.

i'd love to see something like a bug tracking system for people to browse and feel confident that you lot are actually working on bugs and wishes. Not that i'm implying that you arent of course.

[cdicken]

It's tricky because there are so many things that can influence what we develop:

• What will make the software perform better?
• What do our customers ask for on the wish list?
• What do our competitors do?
• What is Microsoft doing? (e.g. UAC control in Vista totally screwed our developments last year)
• What can we achieve in a timely fashion?
• What will enable us to sell more copies?
• etc. etc.

It's just not possible for a software company to be completely transparent in the way you would like. But, to be fair, you guys get much more input from senior management on this community than most other equivalent companies would give. Your views and the discussions here really matter to us, and will continue to be.

[cdicken]

Having said all that - the wish list forum on the community is a bit.. opaque.

We'll be launching a new knowledge base soon which will be more interactive/editable/wiki-y and I'll see if there's some way we can use that for better feature request/tracking.

[gabrielcrowe]

I'm not attacking Actinic, I happen to think its great, and thats why i continue to use it. If it wasnt great, I'd leave it. Trust me.

All the things you mentioned caused delays in your software.

Vistas UAC was a feature in the betas, and gave companies plenty of time to release appropriate patches.

The whole point of a Wishlist is so that you can pick the things that you feel will make your software better from the myriad ideas a user base has to offer. Its very easy for you to turn some ideas down, thats the way it works.

The people that use Actinic on a very 'hardcore' basis around here, I know, feel very 'out of the loop'. It is true that your upper management posts here, but sometimes I feel its only for announcements that anyone could have made. I'm far too used to open source movements disclosing every bug, so that the community can help out, other than closed environments, where the paranoia about your competitors features is rife. Neither business model is the best. They are simply different.

I'd settle for not a list of bugs, but a moderated wishlist, that you, as a developer can say yay or nay to. There are plenty of softwares out there that let people submit a wish, and then others to vote on it. No software feature is out of the reach of any company, if their customers want it that much.

You end up with a feature set that people want. Not fluffy clickable nonesense.

[cdicken]

Vistas UAC was a feature in the betas, and gave companies plenty of time to release appropriate patches.

True, although I would say it was not activated by default in the beta, so that one rather caught us out.

Its very easy for you to turn some ideas down

I disagree here - every wish list request we get represents something which is seen as essential for a user of our software. If we just turn something down outright, we're basically saying "we don't care about your issues" - but we do - the issue is that there are more pressing needs that need to be done before that.

Anyway - this is getting into the nitty gritty of the black arts of product management, which you probably don't want to hear.The ish list forum on the community isn't great because there is no way of keeping popular issues automatically near the top. I'll see whether the new kb can do things like that.

[gabrielcrowe]

fair points.

Until next time, Actinic towers!

<sinister>bwahahaha</sinister>