Another Day - Another BUG!

[taliesyn]

Not a good analagy as AV software is a "it does what it says on the tin" you dont configure it to suit your needs.

I agree with you to a limited extent re testing, but Actinic is moulded by each person to suit his business, therefore you can not expect A to catch every one of 1000's of different scenarios.

I have always said - for about 5 years now - if actinic want end user tesing they must pay people to do it

It was a poor analogy, I'll give you that

However, the point about expecting something to work out of the box still stands.

If I'm buying software that says it does this that and the other then it's not unreasonable to think that it would do those things well, or at least without serious problems.

The 1000s of scenarios, whilst prefectly valid from a developer's point of view is not (and should not be) the concern of the enduser. They have bought an item of software to adequately fulfil a task, be it an online shop, AV software, payroll or whatever.

Ask anyone. They just want something that works for them with the minimum of fuss.

[auztin100]

Having worked for > 20 years in software development, interim critical fixes could be issued relatively simply I should think.

Ditto - and agreed,

Searching orders problem, another "known bug", how can this have been missed, when it doesn't work at all if you upgrade ? ...

[taliesyn]

Lee and Jo, it seems that we're all posting at the same time

I'll back out of the thread for the time being, because it's not good complaining that I have work to do if I'm not actually doing it!

I do applaud Actinic for any efforts they put in to more thorough testing, but by all accounts they do need to listen more to developers and endusers. Not only listen but actually take heed of what they are saying. We're all in this together.

[auztin100]

Ask yourself this first - am i going to stay with actinic for the time being? - if the answer is yes, then ask yourself this - is my time better spent moaning and dealing with issues or actually taking part in beta testing to try and make sure that all users including myself have a better experience and don't get these problems.

Are you joking !!! I'm not sure what business you are in, I don't think "moaning" is the correct word here, my income, my families life depend on the smooth running of this site. My time would be better spent adding/updating/optimising/improving the site, rather than on here.

As stated previously - enduser's expect simple order processing, and searching to work, when buying an off the shelf product.

[jont]

Who has time to take part in beta testing when they are a) trying to run a business, and b) trying to run an online shop

I did

I did the private testing along with several others on here who were approached by Actinic to cover a wide range of testing scenarios - each experts in their own areas of Actinic.

My focus was primarily on design imports / exports amongst others and general usability - I personally only dabbled with the MOTO (largely the 3rd man integration) as I always turn the MOTO off as I have no need on a day to day basis.

Actinic took a quantum leap by using outside testing for v9.0.4 which did throw out some issues which were resolved prior to the second release to which the community at large had access for testing.

As Lee stated v9.0.4 is a substantial release - not perfect but then no software is as it can be used and abused in so many ways let alone the plethora of different spec and windows versions PC's it is installed upon.

[leehack]

Austin you missed the point. You have to talk reality not theory. Your time is better spent doing what you mention of course, but the reality is that if you continue to use actinic, as with any software, you will encounter bugs and wasted time. You can spend your time cleaning up after those bugs or moaning about those bugs or even testing for those bugs. Or you can do all 3 like i do for example.

Cleaning up after bugs is just dead wasted time in anyone's world, so we have moaning and testing left as anything useful. If you test you have less to moan about, so one seems to cure the other.

It's not great given the price tag i agree, rest assured i have lost weeks over my years with actinic, but finally i feel they are doing almost everything they can and are listening. All that is needed now is people like yourself to buy into the testing program, thus reducing your time spent moaning and clearing up the debris - that's all.

If you proved to be a good tester, i'd like to see you get the software for free, it really would be that valuable to everyone associated with actinic IMO.

[auztin100]

Austin you missed the point. You have to talk reality not theory. Your time is better spent doing what you mention of course, but the reality is that if you continue to use actinic, as with any software, you will encounter bugs and wasted time. You can spend your time cleaning up after those bugs or moaning about those bugs or even testing for those bugs. Or you can do all 3 like i do for example.

Cleaning up after bugs is just dead wasted time in anyone's world, so we have moaning and testing left as anything useful. If you test you have less to moan about, so one seems to cure the other.

It's not great given the price tag i agree, rest assured i have lost weeks over my years with actinic, but finally i feel they are doing almost everything they can and are listening. All that is needed now is people like yourself to buy into the testing program, thus reducing your time spent moaning and clearing up the debris - that's all.

If you proved to be a good tester, i'd like to see you get the software for free, it really would be that valuable to everyone associated with actinic IMO.

Lee- Thanks, I apologise if I'm sounding "accusing", or a little mad at the moment, but I've just had the week from hell with actinic, bearing in mind my upgrade from V7 - V9 was just hurrendous from start to finish, and I spent all weekend up through the night overwriting the old site, and testing and re-testing everything (as I would have expected) ...

My wife and I run the business, and after I convinced her we needed actinic 9 for its marketing, and discounting benefits (and more open source) things are just falling down around me. What was once an effecient office is now a nightmare of "we will call you back, we can't seem to find your order" and then this bug was just the icing !

I am a strong promotor of Actinic, and have infact sold, and installed V7 on many of my own customers sites (I also run a website bus.). with great
success (I won't be recommending they upgrade anytime soon !)

After a friend of mine (who also uses actinic) upgraded to version 8, stated all the problems he had with that, I decided we would wait until V9 as "I'm sure all the issues will be ironed out by then"

I would be very willing to take part in testing, sign me up ! even if it only benefits my own business, although the option of free cover/upgrades would be acceptable

Don't get me wrong here, I understand the difficulty of testing so many scenarios. I have only really spat my dummy out over things I think are basic fundamental things. And the fact that I shouldn't be exected to pay for extra cover on such things, and then again for version upgrades.

[Darren B]

OK maybe im missing the point, i have recently changed orders, increased quanities and decreased quantities as well as added new lines and not had this issue.

So from here i would say this points towards a database problem or a product configuration unique to you. Which then means the chances of finding a bug are very slim.

There are hoards of replies here and i am only just catching up but, the bug feed back site was the best advance actinic has made in testing software. At least people who found problems could report in real time and get feed back from Actinic.

Unfortunately one big problem with beta testing is the ability to test different versions is easy as they run side by side, but updates can not live together. Perhaps actinic should release the beta updates as a version for testing purposes once happy release it as the next update. We dont have upgrades anymore they are full versions just MO

[pinbrook]

After a friend of mine (who also uses actinic) upgraded to version 8, stated all the problems he had with that, I decided we would wait until V9 as "I'm sure all the issues will be ironed out by then"

Sadly not!

I would be very willing to take part in testing, sign me up ! even if it only benefits my own business,

you may think it only benefits your business but it will be another avenue tested and may uncover more basic issues too

although the option of free cover/upgrades would be acceptable

good point, maybe free cover for 6 or 12 months would be an acceptable reward, although actinic would have to draw up guidelines for what you would need to do to qualify.

Don't get me wrong here, I understand the difficulty of testing so many scenarios. I have only really spat my dummy out ....

we are all guilty of this

[pinbrook]

Unfortunately one big problem with beta testing is the ability to test different versions is easy as they run side by side, but updates can not live together. Perhaps actinic should release the beta updates as a version for testing purposes once happy release it as the next update. We dont have upgrades anymore they are full versions just MO

Neat idea... this could encourage many more to test - not everyone has an extra pc for a beta release. maybe it could be hardcoded to host on actinic test server too so it doesn't upset peoples live sites either

[auztin100]

OK maybe im missing the point, i have recently changed orders, increased quanities and decreased quantities as well as added new lines and not had this issue.

So from here i would say this points towards a database problem or a product configuration unique to you. Which then means the chances of finding a bug are very slim.

There are hoards of replies here and i am only just catching up but, the bug feed back site was the best advance actinic has made in testing software. At least people who found problems could report in real time and get feed back from Actinic.

Unfortunately one big problem with beta testing is the ability to test different versions is easy as they run side by side, but updates can not live together. Perhaps actinic should release the beta updates as a version for testing purposes once happy release it as the next update. We dont have upgrades anymore they are full versions just MO

Ok, so there is a very slim chance this bug will be discovered, so where do I go from here ?

Send a snapshot into support, who may reply within a week (as I am not a paying contract customer) maybe they will find the problem / bug, and then I'll have to wait 2 - 3 months for the bug fix to be released with a "new version" rather than a patch. That is even if the team decided's it is an important enough bug to put in the next realse, and if it is too complicated ...

[auztin100]

Incidently (back to the topic!) I have managed to export the order into csv files, would this be any use to anyone ??

[Rich Brady]

The problem with releasing the betas as "version" is that the programming would have to be altered again to then make the beta and upgrade, which could in turn throw up a whole host of new bugs.

I was just thinking, dangerous I know, but what if actinic set aside a room/area during their annual conference with the latest beta installed. Then we could turn up, or "pre-book" a time slot with our latest site snapshot(s) and test for say 30mins. Not a great deal of time I know, but we'd all get a chance to test particular issues we have with the software and log them there and then?

[auztin100]

I was just thinking, dangerous I know, but what if actinic set aside a room/area during their annual conference with the latest beta installed. Then we could turn up, or "pre-book" a time slot with our latest site snapshot(s) and test for say 30mins. Not a great deal of time I know, but we'd all get a chance to test particular issues we have with the software and log them there and then?

Dangerous to have us all in the same room you mean

But thats a great idea.

[pinbrook]

I was just thinking, dangerous I know, but what if actinic set aside a room/area during their annual conference with the latest beta installed. Then we could turn up, or "pre-book" a time slot with our latest site snapshot(s) and test for say 30mins. Not a great deal of time I know, but we'd all get a chance to test particular issues we have with the software and log them there and then?

Possible but offering end user testing once a year to a small subset of those who attend the annual conference - assuming it will happen again this year is abit limited.

To beta test properly you need a defined list of things to test and a good week of free time - hence my call to pay people to do it