What are Actinic's long term goals?

[leehack]

Definately but feel 2009 will be an uphill struggle aswell

It's a bit like trying to teach your dad that Farrahs aren't in any more, it just takes time and a lot of it .

[TraceyHand]

IMO an uphill struggle (and, boy, reading this forum, it must feel like a backwards struggle sometimes!) is better than no struggle at all.
How many software companies don't have ANY contact with users at ALL?
Some put out releases and issue fixes as bugs are reported without much 'user' interaction whatsoever.
In fact, probably most business do that.
CB's appearance and honesty on the forum, certainly in the last 12 months or so, has proved time and time again that Actinic are TRYING to make a change.
It must be pretty demoralising to have people stomping all over their efforts.
OK, so Actinic (the software) has its downsides. If you're REALLY that devastated by them, go elsewhere.
If you're interested in facilitating the progress and change, then BETA test. Get involved.
Quit whining and get IN there.

JMO, obviously

[TraceyHand]

It's a bit like trying to teach your dad that Farrahs aren't in any more, it just takes time and a lot of it .

Humour me..
"Farrahs"??
maybe it's a man thing

[leehack]

The old cool trousers with the orange logo hanging off the back pocket that was like a pound sign and an 'F' mixed together. All the rage in the 80's. Woot i found it - http://www.breadandbutter.com/brandb...e.php?bpid=233 - not a bad description i'd say for something not seen in 20 years.

[cbarling]

I think there are some good points made here.

The first area that I would like to comment on is communication. Actinic made a commitment to communicate more with our customers, which resulted in the invitation to "Actinic Towers" to people who have been particularly active on the community. Then we gave a more general invitation to the annual company conference.

However, this is far from the end of the road and I hope that we will be holding further events over the next few months.

Secondly, technology. There are some limitations to the offline/Perl model as well as some distinct advantages. We hope, in the next release or two, to overcome some of those limitations, particularly in the area of stock management.

On another subject, we historically haven't provided more up front details of release plans for a mixture of reasons. One is largely historical where we haven't been good at predicting dates We have then disappointed people by failing to deliver what's been announced, and have usually been heavily criticisedas a result. There's also the issue of environmental things changing, such as the arrival of Vista with UAC turned on by default. This was decided by Microsoft at the last minute and created a large amount of work for us, which we couldn't predict.

However, I do understand the frustrations expressed and I think that it's worth looking at our stance again to try to see if we can communicate more while avoiding the tank traps.

Finally, we are very active in thinking about future products. We've been pretty busy in the last couple of years adding Payments, EPOS, Hosting and Express. We are absolutely not sitting back.

Chris

[RuralWeb]

See the big man is listening. Thanks for that chris.

[TraceyHand]

The old cool trousers with the orange logo hanging off the back pocket that was like a pound sign and an 'F' mixed together. All the rage in the 80's. Woot i found it - http://www.breadandbutter.com/brandb...e.php?bpid=233 - not a bad description i'd say for something not seen in 20 years.

wow. Thanks, Lee. I feel enlightened now

[guccij]

How many software companies don't have ANY contact with users at ALL? Some put out releases and issue fixes as bugs are reported without much 'user' interaction whatsoever.

This was the main reason I moved to Actinic from my previous hewhoshallnotbenamed software.

For all the gripes about Actinic, there must be at least as many people, me included, who find that the software does exactly what it claims to do. And, with careful studying of the AUG, actually does quite a lot more.

I'm not experienced enough to get involved in anything more than beta testing at its most basic level, so I applaud those who are willing to get stuck in on my behalf. I am of course, "only" a Catalog user.

Yes, of course I look forward to new releases and hints of future developments. But at the moment, while it's working well for me and my business, I'm not complaining. I still have too much to learn about what I've already got

[malbro]

However, I do understand the frustrations expressed and I think that it's worth looking at our stance again to try to see if we can communicate more while avoiding the tank traps.

Finally, we are very active in thinking about future products. We've been pretty busy in the last couple of years adding Payments, EPOS, Hosting and Express. We are absolutely not sitting back.

Chris

Thanks for taking time to respond to this thread, I for one look forward to more communications in future.

[chris ashdown]

CB

It would be nice if the odd meeting could be held in central london, which I am sure would give more people a chance to attend, maybe somewhere on the circle line

[Darren B]

It's a bit like trying to teach your dad that Farrahs aren't in any more, it just takes time and a lot of it .

and those pringle jumpers

[gabrielcrowe]

Secondly, technology. There are some limitations to the offline/Perl model as well as some distinct advantages. We hope, in the next release or two, to overcome some of those limitations, particularly in the area of stock management.

This is music to hundreds of users ears. I'd like to offer my every assistance in this effort. This is a very important feature.

On another subject, we historically haven't provided more up front details of release plans for a mixture of reasons. One is largely historical where we haven't been good at predicting dates We have then disappointed people by failing to deliver what's been announced, and have usually been heavily criticisedas a result.

This is very true. I have to ask at this point, how other companies deal with such problems? Surely its a case of properly weighing up the options, and not promising the sun. The problems you're facing now with this monolithic software are due to the software's roots. After pulling Catalog apart, in order to get it to run under wine, i found some 'classic' code, even in the latest releases. The sources for Actinic must be immense. It is for this reason that I can understand the reason given above. I'm not suggesting that you re-write the entire application, but perhaps the reason I cant get cross platform compatibility (when so many other programs run fine) is reliance on some of the more 'interesting' windows libraries and odbc. In fact, the only thing I could find that screamed shiny and new in the whole show, is the PHP interpreter... and its open source.

I suppose what I'm asking is, is Catalog built on top of old problems, and for this reason, is adding certain features difficult? How many years can you continue to use Access databases, for example?

There's also the issue of environmental things changing, such as the arrival of Vista with UAC turned on by default. This was decided by Microsoft at the last minute and created a large amount of work for us, which we couldn't predict.

This is linked with the problem above. However, there are thousands of other software packages out there, that continued along without a glitch. Even if it was not enabled by default, there was plenty of time to implement a solution, in the event that the user would activate account control. Though, the more complicated the application, the more difficult it is to debug. I can appreciate any issues you had with UAC. I had so many problems myself its unreal.

Finally, we are very active in thinking about future products. We've been pretty busy in the last couple of years adding Payments, EPOS, Hosting and Express. We are absolutely not sitting back.

Actinic payments has had a little bit of a rocky start, but is a great idea. I applaud you for that. Express however is sadly lacking. As an online shopping solution, its missing a lot of features and key extendability that makes sense for this kind of platform. I'd love to see more work done on the Express platform, but I fear it will always take the back seat to the desktop version. The ironic thing is, I think that express has more potential in the long run.

However, I do understand the frustrations expressed and I think that it's worth looking at our stance again to try to see if we can communicate more while avoiding the tank traps.

These aren't attacks on Actinic, or your team. They do a great job, but people have trouble watching all the companies around them publishing buglists, wishlists and roadmaps, and then trying to work with a piece of software they need to trust, and being told very little about whats going on with the latest version.

We need things to get excited about! I'm very excited about 9.0.3 I think the things you've added are great.

*thumbs up*

[RuralWeb]

I tend to agree with guccij that the vast majority of users are perfectly happy with the software. I have clients who are very happy with actinic and it's features tbh non of them are interested in stock control or the other stuff gabe mentions. Yes they would be nice to have but they are not going to change the profitability of a website in a big way. Compared with what is happening in the bigger picture they are insignificant.

[Darren B]

I tend to agree with guccij that the vast majority of users are perfectly happy with the software. I have clients who are very happy with actinic and it's features tbh non of them are interested in stock control or the other stuff gabe mentions. Yes they would be nice to have but they are not going to change the profitability of a website in a big way. Compared with what is happening in the bigger picture they are insignificant.

Actually stock control is important to me for some sites and not for others, i manage it using sage, its long winded and obviously not real time. for those selling unique products in ones or two then it is a major issue, hence why some of these use mole-ends tools to automate upload and download its the nearest your get.

But if you fix the stock issue then it also opens the doors to loads of other features.

OK so your right people dont always needs these features, hence my comments a long time ago about actinic needs to evolve to become a modular package, you buy the bits you need, if you want stock control you buy it, if you want order hsitory and invoices you buy it.

But all this hinges on moving away from access db's and proprietory code IMHO

[Mike Hughes]

Actinic needs to evolve to become a modular package,

I couldn't agree less.

Actinic is very good at what it does. It's an all in one, easy to use package that works really well for most small businesses.

Yes, RT stock control is an issue and needs to be addressed, as I'm sure it will be.

If you think Actinic should become an SQL, PHP, modular system with an open API then you're really confusing Actinic with something else. There's already plenty of systems doing that and it would be a huge mistake for actinic to try and do the same.

There are some very clever programmers like Gabe who are trying to get Actinic to do stuff it wasn't intended to do. Unsurprisingly they're running into problems, and I'm sure it's frustrating, but that's no reason for actinic to change course.

Mike