Actinic and Oxatis: Q&A

[leehack]

That might have been true 7 or 8 years ago, but with services such as logmein or gotomypc, it's easy to log into your main PC, effectively giving you the login anywhere solution that you would like, whilst also giving you the facility to work on your site as a desktop application on a plane, train or boat or alike too.

It's easy to make a desktop application available from anywhere in the world nowadays, i don't see it as any barrier in those areas. I daresay you could even use a Mac to do that, so both your issues seem to be solved by a £60 per year service such as gotomypc.

[MMR]

That might have been true 7 or 8 years ago, but with services such as logmein or gotomypc, it's easy to log into your main PC, effectively giving you the login anywhere solution that you would like, whilst also giving you the facility to work on your site as a desktop application on a plane, train or boat or alike too.

It's easy to make a desktop application available from anywhere in the world nowadays, i don't see it as any barrier in those areas. I daresay you could even use a Mac to do that, so both your issues seem to be solved by a £60 per year service such as gotomypc.

For sure I use logmein now from my iPad, mac and even iPhone. But a online version would cut out all the snapshot work as we design in one place and operate from another.

[TraceyHand]

But a online version would cut out all the snapshot work as we design in one place and operate from another.

I agree. Plus is means that you can change the "little things" and not have to wait hours for them to appear online.

An online option *might* actually tempt our main site back!

[chris ashdown]

For the last 8 years I have been using Actinic every release has taken to X.0.3 or 5 to mop up most bugs and failings in the new release, beta testing has taken months

Now you are saying you will release new versions every year to keep up with market demands

With the current backlog of bugs and requests for fixes I am sorry but I cannot understand how you will retain any form of quality control with this rapid new version and feel it is only a way to either make all people buy cover to get free upgrades or have to buy new software every year

I also fail to see the need for keeping up with market needs for 90% of your customers who have a main concern of reliability and 24 hour operations, bells and whistles are fine but at what costs to the shop keeper. remember the designers braying for Google psp then a year latter all is forgotten

Sorry to be so negative but lets base the future on what has been achievable in the last few years and not get carried away with hype

[chris ashdown]

Mint!

I love online as it can be accessed from anywhere that is one of the biggest let downs for me with the desktop version is that 1) its PC only! 2) Can only really be accessed from the office.

A migration tool from desktop to online is a dream come true!

Sage incorporation also with the online package?

WE find that the biggest problems we get are when the access database fails for any reason maybe index or something, if it does fail we can open it in access and repair it or open another hourly backed up copy and replace the database, site security in that sync stops two people accessing the same data is also a main risk area especially as the sales teams grow

Most server based existing software does not seem to offer this security, I am not sure how a server based failure would be better in solving crashed systems and probably not many shop keepers want to update their sites from 20,000 feet or in a railway tunnel

perhaps someone could re-assure me

[leehack]

I think you make some pertinent points Chris, some of them can be countered though. If a annual release will have less in it, it will have less to 'beta' and less to 'fix' before it becomes stable, so will fit easier into the annual timetable. If you think current 'beta' and 'fix' time and place that within a year timetable, you will indeed not see how it will work, remember there will be less involved overall.

If you choose to use a brand new release from day one, or like a lot of us you hold back for 6 months or so, then the rolling timescale is still the same, in effect you are release date + 6 months before you ever use a new release, whether a new release is due out in 6 months time or not (on an annual schedule) is immaterial because you do not use it until 6 months old anyway.

I'd envisage the 6 month window a lot of us tend to use to shorten as less time to wait (less features), so i'd envisage something like this if we took a whole year as an example:

1st Jan - new Release
Mid Feb - maintenance release 1
1st April - maintenance release 2, people start using
1st July - maintenance release 3
1st Oct - final maintenance release (optional)

I think in reality that an 'annual' ideal will slip too on certain releases. For a number of years we've had big releases with big changes, closer on 2 year turnarounds, i'd like to see smaller more manageable but more frequent releases, if for nothing else but to give it a try. You can always choose to use alternate versions too, don't have to use each one.

[super cat]

slightly O/T
but i'm glad to see that the Actinic and Oxatis thread has been edited.., i stopped reading when i saw "could of"....

[chris ashdown]

If each new release has less in it who will bother to upgrade each year, in the past we have had big marketing benifits in moving to the next version, now they are saying to meet market pressures but limited changes in the new versions

In my case and probably many others, we are forced to wait untill release X.0.3 to have a stable version of each new version, with 8 sites and 7 users plus the server, it takes a lot of time changing versions especially when as normal you find little problems so you end up with half the sites on a different version whilst you sort it out and the office girls getting in a muddle using two versions at the same time.

Maybe these little upgrade problems will go away in future but after what you say about lighter versions I am not convinced they will be value for money

[leehack]

It's a balancing act i guess, do you think they have it right as it is then?

[chris ashdown]

Yes, I think 18 months is about right for decent amount of new features and deep de-bug of latest version (remember V9 had 5 updates)

I can also see problems with developers having to work on say 5 versions at any one time, where as you are probably now just working on a bit of V8 a larger bit of V9 and most on V10 which soon could be V9, 10, 11,12,13 if this go ahead and probably big changes to the database with most new versions so even more cost of both version upgrades and developers add-ons, so even more reason to keep missing a version ( and then maybe having upgrade problems)

I guess as always for business Actinic has to undertake the fine balance between what the can offer and how much money they can make via different scenario's

[gabrielcrowe]

I have played with almost every ecommerce platform out there but I have not heard of this one.

http://oxashopuk.oxatis.com/
...is written in asp. Does this mean windows servers?

Is this a SaaS only? No download and host my own?

[completerookie]

any reason why Oxatis isn't talking about the tie-up with actinic on their website?

[Steve G Griggs]

If it's written in ASP I would think it's almost certain to need a Windows server if my memory isn't playing tricks

[Jan]

It is possible to use asp on unix if you install a patch of some sort, I have asp scripts for my site and was going to do that, in the end though, I just had them rewritten in php, it seemed easier.

Regards,

[fergusw]

You can run ASP on Unix machines using ChilliSoft ASP, although square peg, round hole springs to mind.