v9.0.3 Public Beta

[Darren B]

Actinic traditionally release these things on a Friday

To be honest if your already on V9 then the upgrade is likely to be minimal (fingers crossed) but earlier versions are easy, you can install the new one an run it side by side, make sure you happy before the change. If it breaks then you work on it until it you fix it.

[Benjamin Dyer]

(Sorry Benjamin, I couldn't resist!)

HA! No problem I am big enough and ugly enough to take it on the chin (those who have met me can confirm)

The one thing I will just remind everyone, the release we are hoping to get up soon is beta 2, its not the final release, that comes after a full regression test. Regression testing can take a while, we need to test everything from start to finish and as you all know our product has a lot of features and potential configurations.

That said, if it passes regression testing and the feedback from you guys is good, then Beta 2 will be the final release, but there is always the potential for something to crop up. I am trying to be as realistic / open and honest as possible, something I know the community wants.

[chris ashdown]

Disapointed

[chris ashdown]

After waiting for 9.0.3 from first promised to be following shortly after the release of 9.0.2 in June 2008, I must ask myself if its ever going to be worth the hassel of upgradingd to V10 when it eventually comes out

Whilst everyone wants bug free software, they dont realistically expect every bug to be sorted in one go, but like it used to be with actinic, upgrades every few months

Would I be right that all the development time is being given to V10 and only a few people are working on 9.0.3 and the management has said *** it lets have one big upgrade and then end V9

I am rapidly loosing faith in actinic, I should be worrying about selling my goods and not waiting on a release that never happens so that i can upgrade my design and solve a number of snags and increase sales.

From past snippets on this forum it even looks like nobody even thought about testing MU untill a few weeks ago and after being informed that 9.0.3 was expected to be released today by CB and now no expected release date I want everyone to know I am unhappy.

[Benjamin Dyer]

Hi Chris,

Sorry you are feeling frustrated with v9.0.3, if it helps let me clear a few things up.

The first thing to recognise is we are fully aware v9.0.3 has been a long time coming. With this release we decided to include a number of features to improve performance as well as brand new features we believe will be useful to our customers. Great examples of this are the multi threaded upload and the single page upload. This is a significant undertaking for a maintenance release.

As Chris B has already stated on the community the biggest priority in Actinic right now is v9.0.3. My full development team are working on this release and it takes precedence over everything.

Multi User as with all aspects of our software gets the full QA treatment, as you know from previous posts we always have a period of testing dedicated just for MU, we have also been testing MU as a team since the beginning of this release.

With regards to the release cycle we have tried to be as open and honest as possible. We have been feeding back to all of our v9.0.3 beta testers and working as closely as possible with those who have been taking part.

If you have concerns I would encourage you to call or email me directly and I will be more than happy to discuss any of the above with you, my skype ID is also in my profile.

Best Regards,

[Jarvis]

Ben, I fully understand that things must be thoroughly and rigorously tested for these 'maintenance' releases.
Nonetheless, I do question the rationale behind its' scale and scope.

Most users of Actinic rely on it as a revenue stream and therefore time is money.
For my part, I finished work on a number of sites a few months back but am unable to finalise billing because I have been unable to deliver a fully functioning system as promised.
In particular the MOTO forms.

The priority in just about everybody's case is in getting fixed, that which is broken.
The 'nice to have', and extra functionality is secondary in priority and NOT holding up work and payment.
Why then oh why did you feel it necessary to include these in such an important 'bug fix' release?
Surely these could have waited until 9.0.4.
The extra delay is just plain nonsense.

I know that it is always good policy to exceed expectations but in this case I, and I think I speak for many others, would have preferred you exceeding those expectations by delivering earlier than promised rather than adding further delay by adding frills.

At the moment, I dread picking up the phone.
When I have clients foaming at the mouth and making veiled threats for failure to deliver, a few Christmas presents is not going to help.

I DO recognise that you and your team are working hard, I just wish you were working SMARTer.

[Benjamin Dyer]

I DO recognise that you and your team are working hard, I just wish you were working SMARTer.

Thanks Jarvis, all noted, there is obviously a difficult balance between one persons 9.0.3 requirements and anothers. We have to make a judgment call and pleasing as many people as possible is a tough goal.

However, listening to our customers is a big part of that so I thank you for your feedback.

[Rich Brady]

Sweepstake on release time as i'm gambling on a Friday release. I'll go for 2.20pm. Roll up roll up, woot.

You are good...

[malbro]

Actinic traditionally release these things on a Friday

Ok so Lee wins the pot

[leehack]

Woot, pay up then.

[Darren B]

Beers on Lee

So Ben is taking up the CD postition then - Just need to get him upto speed with the bug fixing

[AndrewF]

9.0.3 for bigger sites

Hi folks - new to the community - my 1st post!!

Saw a comment earlier about 9.0.3 being faster to generate / upload.
Anybody tested with a big site? - if so how long did it take.?


I have a site with about 40,000 objects (html & jpg's etc) which has been taking from 11 to 18 hours to generate and upload (18 hrs on shared server - faster on a dedicated server) so interested if this makes much difference. If not I may be heading for a server side ecommerce solution for the big sites!

[TraceyHand]

Woot, pay up then.

you know where it is
Come get it if you want it

[chris ashdown]

you know where it is
Come get it if you want it

Tracey!!!!!!! What are you saying, I thought you were a happily married lady

[Jan]

Anybody tested with a big site? - if so how long did it take.?

Significantly faster, but I can't give you comparitive times, might be worth you installing the beta, take a snapshot first so that you can go back if you don't like the new version. You should find that moving around the store is significantly quicker as well as upload times.

Regards,