v9.0.3 Release

[Darren B]

I think occasionally Actinic need a pat on the back for a cracking job well done and I'll stick my head over the parapet and say 'thank you team Actinic'

I agree john, but it took 18 / 24 months to listen to users about problems within actinic and the software, to me that was 2 years of wasted time and exspense. I like Actinic, i am comfortable with it, and i know that some of the things i want are my personal wishes and not everyone elses. Having CB venture on the forum and air his laundry in public was a vast step in the right direction.

Im here for the long haul, at some time the shipping, the checkout and a host of other niggles will be resolved i only hope it is not to long in comming.

[chris ashdown]

It works for me to and love the Marketing features which people seem to forget, but I do wonder how many orders I loose through the long drawn out checkout pages

Why O Why can they not condense the required information into a maximum of one or two pages after all how many people go round in circles if they need a delivery address different from the invoice, why not have both that and the shipping all on one page like everyone else.

[Jan]

I do wonder how many orders I loose through the long drawn out checkout pages

Two page checkout has been available for ages as a plugin Chris :

http://blog.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acti...out-speed.html

It's free as well, if you backlink to stinkyink.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

Two page checkout has been available for ages as a plugin Chris :

Very true, but the more you patch the extra cost there is to maintain and upgrade. i'm afraid i'm one of those developers who do not patch perl unless it is absolutely necessary. (I've had clients upgrade by mistake! and the site went tits up)

Even more controversally the multi stage checkout doesn't bother me..

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Two page checkout has been available for ages as a plugin

Unfortunately this can't be used if you have more than one PSP (I use Paypal as a second PSP option). Correct me if I am wrong.

[leehack]

There is a (or used to be) limitation with this addon, where it only worked if you only had one PSP in place IIRC. That's a limiting factor, so I wouldn't class it as something for the masses in today's world.

[RuralWeb]

I think occasionally Actinic need a pat on the back for a cracking job well done and I'll stick my head over the parapet and say 'thank you team Actinic'

I also have said this many times and made the effort to beta test and go to actinic towers for user group meetings so "Ive done my bit" so to speak. But I can also post about the things that affect me and my clients giving a bigger picture.

As others have posted there are solutions to many of the features I suggest BUT as jo says they all require actinic to be modified and are a nightmare when upgrades come along. General users are not capable of performing these mods BUT actinic developers can easily incorporate many of them as standard so it improves the software for all.

902 worked very well for me and I had no issues with it at all - I also posted to that effect. However I do have issues with 903 so I guess its my turn to feel the pain.

Another thing I found the other day was that 903 now sends email when you press the send button rather than having to use the send all button, it was only a couple of weeks ago we were all complaining about how long ago that should have been fixed. Again this is great news so well done for fixing that as its an important customer facing issue.

[leehack]

902 worked very well for me and I had no issues with it at all - I also posted to that effect. However I do have issues with 903 so I guess its my turn to feel the pain.

This kind of illustrates the issues on perception with multi-use software for me. I found 9.0.2 to be the most appalling software release I have ever used. It was simply junk for me and I stopped all development in V9 because of it. Actinic have detailed around 200 fixes that went into 903, so there was clearly big problems. Yet you find 903 worse than 902. I find that as incredible as I do you saying 902 was fine, but this software can bite you from many different angles it seems and lots of people seem to suffer in lots of different ways.

Apart from the usual glutton on DMP errors when in site options and the 3-year wait for the design snapshot features of V8 to work properly, I find 903 quite solid now. There will be lots of other stories on both sides I guess, how you explain them is anyone's guess.

[Steve G Griggs]

Both versions (apart from the V9.03 dissappearing products BetaBug) have worked OK for me. I have fewer issues than I did with V8.
It just goes to show we all seem to face different bugs, quirks & so on.
But to put it in perspective Microsoft have their Day 0 exploit bug in Internet Explorer-that's a potential minefield that many people are wandering around in unaware.

[malbro]

But to put it in perspective Microsoft have their Day 0 exploit bug in Internet Explorer-that's a potential minefield that many people are wandering around in unaware.

and plenty of other bugs as well.

Actinic is many things to many people and it will be used in different ways, some features will only apply to a limited number of users and the more experienced PC users will try to use different techniques when working with Actinic, I find that cut works a lot better for me than delete. So although it does have some 'undocumented features' , I personally am happy to stick with Actinic as in general it does a good job at a reasonable price.

[Steve G Griggs]

I agree 100%. I will also say that no software is 100% bug free, and I suspect, this will always be the case.

[fergusw]

I agree 100%. I will also say that no software is 100% bug free, and I suspect, this will always be the case.

So true. Design something to do X and Y and people will always find a way to use it for Z, and find bugs.

Bugs:
"Bugs are a consequence of the nature of human factors in the programming task." - Wikipedia

[chris ashdown]

As one of the early users of computers in the 1970's for Hydrographic surveys (HP9810, 9820, 9830, 9845 etc), there were quite a lot of software programs that were bug free`normally built using HP Basic or Fortran, Its only since the larger more general software came out that bugs became the norm

If only designers could start with a clean sheet of paper and not have to worry about compatability with older versions, just think of the software we would get

[brucet]

no software is 100% bug free

Absolutely. Which is why you really really wouldn't want to be a Eurofighter test pilot.
;-)

[cbarling]

Thanks for the kind remarks.

While it's true that all software has bugs, we still feel that there is further to go in making Actinic rock solid.

Chris