B12 - IMO not worthy of release..
Sorry if I seem rude and offensive, but this has to be the worst "release" I have encountered, and is not worthy of having been released it almost seems untested.
Notes:
Where has the nice pretty red delete gone, and what is this monstrosity meant to do?
If I click it it doesnt hide/show note content ,it does nothing except change the arrow direction, even in a new notefile
Ah and that where the delete function is now hidden, by clicking on it I get this popup
can we have our seperate delete button back please
For me this is worthy of the Beta Lemon award.. I respect your right to disagree
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
Comments
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DominicM said:
can we have our seperate delete button back please
No, no, no keep this and add a hide/show function, a properties function (I already had a thread on that) ... This structure makes it harder to accidentally delete notes and, except in testing, I consider deleting notes to be a relatively uncommon action.
And while I have posted several bug reports, I am curious, Dominic, as to what problems make you say:
DominicM said:this has to be the worst "release" I have encountered, and is not worthy of having been released it almost seems untested.
I haven't seen that many bugs reported. Was I not watching?
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
I consider deleting notes to be a relatively uncommon action.
I delete regularly..
If Logos4 would allow drag and drop notes/clippings beween open files. 99% of my need for deleting would be removed and I would agree with you
I take notes into generic notefile and then later think about filing/categorising them or pulling then in to a seperate notefile I use for sermon prep, so have to copy paste or go back and add a new clipping to right file.
MJ. Smith said:I am curious, Dominic, as to what problems make you say:
DominicM said:this has to be the worst "release" I have encountered, and is not worthy of having been released it almost seems untested.
Sorry maybe i was a bit emotive, but back when I was employed full-time to develop software applications, I would have been given a written warning (severely disciplined) for releasing a non working function in an application..
MJ. Smith said:I haven't seen that many bugs reported. Was I not watching?
Thats the point, its not a fix, it's a new function, so unless the developer added it into the code last night.. just before the build.., if its non working it means it hasnt been tested (or it would have been found), hence my annoyance now.
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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I would a gree this needed a little more "think through" ya know
But I do think we would like what it could become, so don't give up.
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DominicM said:
Ah and that where the delete function is now hidden, by clicking on it I get this popup
can we have our seperate delete button back please
For me this is worthy of the Beta Lemon award.. I respect your right to disagree
I will exercise my right to disagree. I like this new arrangement. Now, if the Dev Team would add a show/hide feature for Martha…
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The button does have a secondary function. If you attach a note to text, you used to be stuck with the text as a title. Now attach not to a text, click this button, and you can add a title to that note.
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Jack Caviness said:
I like this new arrangement. Now, if the Dev Team would add a show/hide feature for Martha
For MJ's use. her posts or her in general???[;)]
In Christ,
Dave (who probably thinks he's funnier than he is before the first [C]
<><
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Philip Spitzer said:
The button does have a secondary function. If you attach a note to text, you used to be stuck with the text as a title. Now attach not to a text, click this button, and you can add a title to that note.
Yeah I must be having a bad day, cos I think thats not "right" too..
I add note to word
then add a title through new button
what I would expect it to do is this
otherwise I dont see the point, you can just add a top line to the note details...
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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I've reported your feedback -- thanks.
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DominicM said:
If Logos4 would allow drag and drop notes/clippings beween open files. 99% of my need for deleting would be removed and I would agree with you
Do you want to:
Drag from notes to notes?
Drag from clppings to clippings?
Drag from clippings to notes?
Drag drom notes to clippings?
All of the above?
You should be able to drag from notes to notes.-Todd
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Todd White said:
You should be able to drag from notes to notes.
Sweet, thx for putting it in, have been trying drag and drop on notes, without success with each version up to 10 and had given up on it getting adopted, so didn't even try this release. thats gonna save me loads of time/greif...
For me, I would be happy if you could also do clippings->clippings. but I guess others might want cross-dragging
I also want to apologise, this is definietly not a lemon after all, the notes drag-drop is fantastic, and a great addition, and actually improves significantly the usability of the software.
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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DominicM said:
Sorry maybe i was a bit emotive, but back when I was employed full-time to develop software applications, I would have been given a written warning (severely disciplined) for releasing a non working function in an application..
While I understand your position here, my observation of the types of bugs we find leads me to suspect that the programmers are not backed up by good testing software and test scripts i.e. that like most IT development, testing is treated as a second class cousin to making the product. Note: I speak from 30+ years of trying to get sufficient time for sufficient testing.
LATER NOTE: I really didn't mean to start a bash Logos development thread. I wanted to stop programmer-bashing.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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True MJ, I also remember that well.
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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MJ. Smith said:
While I understand your position here, my observation of the types of bugs we find leads me to suspect that the programmers are not backed up by good testing software and test scripts i.e. that like most IT development, testing is treated as a second class cousin to making the product. Note: I speak from 30+ years of trying to get sufficient time for sufficient testing.
I wonder whether they have dedicated testers or if the developers are doing all their own testing? Having a test team whose sole responsibility is to try to break it would stop a lot of these bugs in their tracks before they ever reached the beta testers (and non-beta users!). I think Logos might be relying on the beta test cycle as a way of avoiding needing to have their own in-house test team, or at least getting it out the door faster before sufficent testing has been done. I think that is a sloppy development process, but I can understand it given Logos's relative immaturity as a company. However now that they've hit the bigtime, I hope they will consider some more robust in-house testing strategies, regression testing, test scripts, test automation, whitebox testing, etc. If I were their Director of Development, I'd have a thing or two to teach them...
When I was working at Microsoft, we would never release "beta" versions that were still having new features added left and right. Beta was a stage we didn't enter until after we were feature complete. Even "alpha" was post feature complete. This is roughly the release cycle we used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
I must admit that the way Logos does things is really odd and unfortunate. I think they are realizing this with how all the support calls are killing their response time which they used to pride themselves in. I seriously think they should reconsider their testing and release strategy for future releases. Unfortunately, I think this model is deeply engrained in their DNA.
I also wish they had program managers to design the features instead of having it all be done by geeky developers. While L4 is a major improvement over L3 in usability, it is still very obviously a programmer's toy. Again, deeply engrained in Logos's DNA, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. But it sure does make for a lot of extra work for us forum support and wiki editor types. Wonder what things would be like if we weren't here doing this?
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MJ. Smith said:DominicM said:
Sorry maybe i was a bit emotive, but back when I was employed full-time to develop software applications, I would have been given a written warning (severely disciplined) for releasing a non working function in an application..
While I understand your position here, my observation of the types of bugs we find leads me to suspect that the programmers are not backed up by good testing software and test scripts i.e. that like most IT development, testing is treated as a second class cousin to making the product. Note: I speak from 30+ years of trying to get sufficient time for sufficient testing.
I
agree with y'all. While I can only speak based on the years that I worked
in computer development, it does appear to me that Logos 4 does not go through
thorough testing. What Logos released as 4.0a was at best a beta
version. With functions like printing not being part of the program, I
would not even call the program fit to be called alpha.What
is being released as beta, let's say that I would not call it beta, or alpha,
or . . ..The
cost of keeping a program in house until it is ready to be released is
greatly lower than the cost of repairing the program once it has left
the building. Bob posted on his blog (http://www.bobpritchett.com/blog/2010/01/on_failing_our_customers.html)
how they have failed in providing good customer support. While this is
my opinion, one of the reasons why they are still receiving complaints
about the software comes from the fact that the software was (and continues) to
be under tested before it goes out to the public. Again my opinion, Bob
is now paying the cost of releasing a product that was not tested (and
continues not to be tested) thoroughly.0 -
Personally, I think Logos is too customer driven at this point.
Every time a release comes out, everyone chimes in on how if they would only implement this or do it this way to save them an extra key click, or make it this color. Treating software development like it is a salad buffet at the local fast food place.
I have been astounded at how many of these suggestions are actually being implemented by the Logos developers and then everyone complains because the releases are so buggy. I have never worked in a development environment that functioned like that.
The trouble is Logos has already started down this path, and going backwards is really hard. But not half as hard as convincing people that their favorite idea is too expensive or complicated to implement. So I guess, I will just have to make sure I am not part of the problem.
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I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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I'll humbly throw my two cents in, I think this will all work out fine. Logos 4 is built on a great foundation that should bring nothing but more power and capability to bear in more features over the next 5 years. Everyone's computer will get faster, and most of the performance problems will just go away due to technology.
As for the bugs and features, I felt at the time in December that Logos 4 was out a year early. Now I understand at some point you put your stick in the ground and the urgency of a released product helps make things better, but for no other reason than a long list of ver.3 features not yet implemented well, I have NEVER seen that in a commerical product. So it will take a year to fully have all of ver 3 implemented, have all the great features we already see and more in ver 4, and a lot of the bugs squashed and things stabilized.
If we are having this discussion a year from now I will be shocked. But IMHO it will take this whole year to get there. The nice thing, I love what we have in ver 4 already, and I upgraded when I decided I could take some pain for all the new stuff. It will be fine. (and I love the betas, it allows us to engage in the process quicker).
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I don't think Logos is sending out incomplete, untested programs, but inviting us (the beta testers) into their lab to help. We are the testers - what a treat. Thank you Logos. (By the way, Logos does pre-test before releasing versions to us.)
As beta versions go, these aren't bad - actually pretty stable. I've never had a system crash and it's been a while since I've had a program crash. I have a 3 year old laptop that doesn't move as fast as I'd like, but considering what all the Logos software is doing under the keyboard I'm impressed. Most of my problems are with the carbon unit in front of the keyboard. (Get it? Carbon life form? Me, the human? Never mind.)
We need to give Logos all the feedback we can - it's their choice if and when it goes in. Their customer service sensitivity is a refreshing change from most providers out there. What impresses me is their ability to accommodate the needs and desires of their core users - those of us crazy enough to study, prepare and present God's Word using beta software (with the back-up of Logos 3 and hard-copy just in case but rarely used). Even accommodating conflicting features by making them options we can choose from. Choice is good.
I got excited when I saw the little red delete button for notes was replaced by a menu - promise/hope of cool future features! One function at a time is fine with me! - keep 'em coming (once a week works for me). I use notes a lot - very heavy user in Logos 3. I used all the notes features and am looking for them in Logos 4.
Thank you Logos for the drag-and-drop from note to note - I too had been watching for but stopped trying it a few versions ago. Glad its in.
Clippings to Clippings would be helpful too.
Ephesians 5:20-21
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Dan DeVilder said:
I vote to make all of Terry's posts appear Neon Green.
Tangerine orange or nothing!
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Tim Hensler said:
I don't think Logos is sending out incomplete, untested programs, but inviting us (the beta testers) into their lab to help. We are the testers - what a treat. Thank you Logos. (By the way, Logos does pre-test before releasing versions to us.)
As beta versions go, these aren't bad - actually pretty stable. I've never had a system crash and it's been a while since I've had a program crash. I have a 3 year old laptop that doesn't move as fast as I'd like, but considering what all the Logos software is doing under the keyboard I'm impressed. Most of my problems are with the carbon unit in front of the keyboard. (Get it? Carbon life form? Me, the human? Never mind.)
We need to give Logos all the feedback we can - it's their choice if and when it goes in. Their customer service sensitivity is a refreshing change from most providers out there. What impresses me is their ability to accommodate the needs and desires of their core users - those of us crazy enough to study, prepare and present God's Word using beta software (with the back-up of Logos 3 and hard-copy just in case but rarely used). Even accommodating conflicting features by making them options we can choose from. Choice is good.
I got excited when I saw the little red delete button for notes was replaced by a menu - promise/hope of cool future features! One function at a time is fine with me! - keep 'em coming (once a week works for me). I use notes a lot - very heavy user in Logos 3. I used all the notes features and am looking for them in Logos 4.
Thank you Logos for the drag-and-drop from note to note - I too had been watching for but stopped trying it a few versions ago. Glad its in.
Clippings to Clippings would be helpful too.
Nice post, Tim. My sentiments exactly: I think most of your problems are in the carbon unite . . . .
har har.
Seriously, nice post, and I agree. I am definitely not a techie, and I appreciate the viewpoints of those who have worked in the field: it is normal to form opinions and expectations. But I am pretty stoked about L4, even with the Notes and handouts issues.
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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Quote:
When I was working at Microsoft, we would never release "beta" versions that were still having new features added left and right. Beta was a stage we didn't enter until after we were feature complete. Even "alpha" was post feature complete. This is roughly the release cycle we used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
I must admit that the way Logos does things is really odd and unfortunate.
Rosie,
Just a thought:
Its' neither odd nor unfortunate in my view, but instead it's a viable stragety to the "old way" of doing things.
Bradley had posted a long explanation of why they have gone the way that they have, (and there are a lot of good reasons for doing so)....and he pointed out that many software companies are doing exactly what Logos is doing.
times change...
From wiki on beta softare:
As the Internet has allowed for rapid and inexpensive distribution of software, companies have begun to take a more loose approach to use of the word "beta". [1]Netscape Communications was infamous for releasing alpha level versions of its Netscape web browser to the public and calling them "beta" releases. In February 2005, ZDNet published an article about the recent phenomenon of a beta version often staying for years and being used as if it were in production-level [2]. It noted that Gmail and Google News, for example, had been in beta for a long period of time and were not expected to drop the beta status despite the fact that they were widely used; however, Google News did leave beta in January 2006, followed by Google Apps, including Gmail, in July 2009.[3]. This technique may also allow a developer to delay offering full support and/or responsibility for remaining issues. In the context of Web 2.0, people even talk of perpetual betas to signify that some software is meant to stay in beta state. Also, "beta" is sometimes used to indicate something more like a release candidate such as the LittleBigPlanet public beta.
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Robert Pavich said:
Its' neither odd nor unfortunate in my view, but instead it's a viable stragety to the "old way" of doing things.
Bradley had posted a long explanation of why they have gone the way that they have, (and there are a lot of good reasons for doing so)....and he pointed out that many software companies are doing exactly what Logos is doing.
times change...
Can you provide a link to Bradley's post?
Times change but the customer's perception of what they should be receiving has not, especially when they have paid for it (I'm talking about the product so the "software is free" argument is irrelevant). Therefore the development strategy still has an objective measure of its effectiveness and no company can afford to ignore it. Calling a released product a beta is actually a good strategy IF the product works because it has lowered the customer's expectations somewhat - "Oh, it's somewhat buggy but what can you expect from a beta"! Therefore you can't ignore the perception of customers who know that a product is buggy and should be called a beta. Likewise, it would be short-sighted to ignore the perceptions of ex-developers (Rosie?, Martha) AND myself that the strategy is not working very well. Those "old ways" didn't come without a fight from management that they couldn't afford the overhead of quality assurance (QA), but they quickly realised that they needed to budget for QA at all levels, not just the obvious overhead of specialist staff. On multi-billion dollar projects regression testing scenarios were vital to ongoing confidence in the product over a long period of development. B8 proves that point as it introduced a bug into the elementary Library sort functions and B9 was released the next day! PRA development should have received more in-house testing ... there are other things that are obvious to IT professionals looking at the results and responses that the development strategy is fostering.
But I'm confident that the QA bar has been lifted as I think B12 was slated to be a RC but the merge functionality still has a couple of bugs, and this has been very costly with the number of rebuilds of user installations in 4.0a. Then there has been a desire to get PRA's working right and clean up some old issues.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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It seems to me that with the number of pre-pub (Zondervan) about to go out Logos' virtual door it would behoove them to get 4.0b with its merge index fixes out the door or if they can't get it up to quality standards soon, roll those indexer fixes into another SR for 4.0a. The update to the Galaxie journals demonstrated the mass havoc that indexer's bugs can cause. I am anticipating another wave as the Calvin 500 collection (that's a lot of info!) triggers merge indexes in 4.0a installations.
Prov. 15:23
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Jack Caviness said:
Now, if the Dev Team would add a show/hide feature for Martha…
I'm with those that think this might be overkill--and even scary if they could implement it!
Besides, we LIKE Martha!
[:D]
Grace & Peace,
Bill
MSI GF63 8RD, I-7 8850H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2TB HDD, NVIDIA GTX 1050Max
iPhone 12 Pro Max 512Gb
iPad 9th Gen iOS 15.6, 256GB0 -
Dave Hooton said:
Can you provide a link to Bradley's post?
Dave,
I looked and looked and can't find it.
I even checked wikipedia to see if I could remember which one it was....no dice.
Possibly Bradley could point us to it again?
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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I suppose we could ask that Terry's post be any color we want, as long as the font is the same color.[:)]
Blessings,
FloydPastor-Patrick.blogspot.com
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Floyd Johnson said:
I suppose we could ask that Terry's post be any color we want, as long as the font is the same color.
[:P]
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Rosie Perera said:
I must admit that the way Logos does things is really odd and unfortunate. I think they are realizing this with how all the support calls are killing their response time which they used to pride themselves in. I seriously think they should reconsider their testing and release strategy for future releases. Unfortunately, I think this model is deeply engrained in their DNA.
I just want to say, for the record, that we asked Rosie to come join us more than a decade ago. She could have fixed it all before things became too ingrained in our DNA. So it's Rosie's fault. :-)
We are understaffed in testing, but getting ready to add another. Hard as it is to believe, the act of hiring is actually consuming a lot of our time right now. I'm involved in four interviews just this morning. Developers/testers take even longer, and it's nearly impossible to hire a program manager or UI designer from outside -- they need so much product understanding to be useful, as well as rare skills. If you know of someone, send them my way.
The biggest problem seems to be terminology -- everyone has a different meaning for "alpha", "beta", etc. Basically, we use "alpha" for things that are "far from finished" and "beta" for anything that's not "released". And once the product is released -- like 4.0 -- we only ever use "beta" for subsequent releases of not-yet-finished incremental releases.
While I'm no longer coder -- and appointed a development manager earlier this month -- I'm still the "program manager". I was putting lots of time and daily attention on that before the 4.0 release, but am now buried in all the things I was ignoring then, the new hiring, travel, etc. and confess I'm not getting to look at the daily builds / answer design questions / push back on developers as frequently as I'd like. We actually aren't letting "geeky developers" design features -- our UX designer and I do that -- but in the 4.0b cycle the developers have been getting more freedom / less interaction with the two of us, because we're busy with fires in other parts of the company.
Not an excuse, just an explanation. And maybe I'm still too "geeky" myself -- though I really do think we'd made huge progress. It hurts me deeply (not really :-) ) to hear it still looks like a "programmer's toy." I tried so hard to drink all the iPhone Kool-Aid. :-)
At Microsoft they were hiring, training, and rotating PM's all the time. We very much want to move to that model -- and are finally big enough to do it, I believe -- but hiring a PM for our flagship product is difficult (and scary). We need a professional level understanding of UI, product development, and a deep, deep understanding of our product and users. It's a hard combo to find.
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Dave Hooton said:
Can you provide a link to Bradley's post?
Dave & Bob,
This may be the message thread on design you are looking for:
http://community.logos.com/forums/t/10026.aspx
Regards,
Scott
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