The holiday season is over, so as Juni completes the manly part of removing the decorations, I think I'll give our users a much-needed update.
The biggest news is that all those plans that we had finally have some time to see the light of day. Juni isn't taking on any more projects until the upgrades are out, and new skins released. He needs to do a logo for a site, but that's not going to take anytime at all.
I think most everyone knows this, but there are a few reasons that updates and new skins come so slowly. Firstly, Juni has a day job, and doesn't want to be at the computer 24 hours a day. This is supposed to be fun, after all. Secondly, for the past year, it seems that every few months a project from some company or another would come along, and each takes a few months. For example, Juni has done a heck of a lot of the default graphics seen in many SBSH.net programs. We have no regrets there. SBSH is awesome to work with, and has saved our butts many times over with their download hosting. Juni just needs some time to release new stuff before taking on projects.
The biggest challenge at the moment is that when it rains program updates, it pours program updates. Programs that need skin updates are Wisbar Advanced 3, SPB Pocketplus 4, and Pocketbreeze 5.4 and Pocketweather 2.0. The last two aren't as show-stopping as the first two. SBSH is gradually switching from TGA to PNG, but so far still support both. Pocketweather 2.0 has some new bells and whistles to take advantage of that could be nice to explore. WA2 themes still work with WA3, but understandably, proper WA3 themes are sexier. SPB has completely changed the way meters are skinned, and so that is completely non-working until I roll out the updates (which I've already started on).
So to start with, Juni is halfway done with the WA3 update to SW & SBSHDeluxe. It's not a copy of the same old theme, it's a new theme, so the old one will probably still be left in the skin suite just to give some more choice. He's done with VGA, and somewhat done with QVGA. Remember, all updates to everything are times 2. Also with this update he's including a new layout for Pocketweather 2.0.
And from there, he'll just go right on down the line until all the exclusives are updated. I'll bump up the version number to a full point release with the WA3 updates. Me fixing the SPB meters will just be minor point updates.
This brings me to the SWDeluxe dilemma. Once we saw that the SPB meters worked, I brought up the question: "So, do we delete the old extended themes or re-arrange them so it's clear they are for users of older versions of Pocketplus?" Juni's knee-jerk response was to say to completely clean house and delete the old stuff. But then we both thought about how users sometimes need that older stuff, and how that leads to the bigger question of SWDeluxe. SWDeluxe is named for the program Stocks & Weather Today, whose party trick was changing your today theme based on the weather forecast (QVGA only). All of the today themes made for Stocks & Weather Today are extended themes, meaning they will only work with SPB Pocketplus installed... any version older than 4.0. If I were to remove all of the extended themes, then there goes Stocks & Weather Today as well, and the very thing the skin suite was named for. Then again, it would make the zip file smaller.
In product updates, people don't generally like when you take stuff out, but it can be confusing to new users if things are left in that are less than current, like for example, Weatherpanel, or Stocks & Weather Today. But then what about those users who need that stuff, who know what they're doing? No, we can't remove that stuff, but I'll just rearrange it so that it's clear that these skins are dependent on having previous versions of SPB Pocketplus.
I think the same users who like to take advantage of some of the older graphics are the same ones who would know how to make an extended theme become a normal theme. Yes, we discussed doing that as well, but that would make SWDeluxe gi-normous, and all for an older program that probably doesn't work so well anymore. No, I think for now we'll let the older Stocks & Weather Today themes be dependent on having older Pocketplus, and see how it goes.
Even as I was typing the above paragraph, we were still debating about what to do about Stocks & Weather Today. Does it still even work? Maybe I should just make new today themes for it.
The WA3 update will take some time, as it seems he's doing new Wisbar themes entirely, but after that, it's time for new stuff. Yes, B&W will now finally have Black soft keys. :)
It's always good to get a report on whats going on. Just my two cents but instead of adding to SW why don't you make a SW2 and let people pay for it. I for one would feel guilty to use your product without paying and to just keep adding to a product just because of others updates is not good for you.
Posted by: Jolt | January 04, 2008 at 04:48 AM