Surfulater got to a point where it was working pretty well and did most things our users had requested and that I wanted of it. There are problems no doubt, such as the poor foreign language support, especially with search. This dates back to a poor implementation decision I made in the very beginning of Surfulater’s design, one which cannot be undone or easily fixed, otherwise it would have been long ago.

To resolve the foreign language support problem and address some other issues requires an extensive and expensive rewrite, which can’t be justified. Furthermore I was beginning to see huge changes in the direction certain types of applications were heading and in the technologies being used to develop them. So it was time to step back and rethink the entire way I develop software, the technologies I use where all this fits in with Surfulater.

The huge game changer in my opinion is the move to applications that run on multiple devices (Desktop PC’s, Tablet’s, Smart Phones) and enable you to access your information on any of these devices, from anywhere. Furthermore you can add and update your information and have the changes available on each device automatically and in real time. This is where I’ve wanted Surfulater to head for quite some time, however it will never happen using the current C++ Windows Desktop code base.

To move forward it was time for a major change, time to move out of my comfort zone of Microsoft Windows Desktop Software development in compiled C++ with all the tools I’ve been using for many, many years to the new world of applications that run on multiple devices, using dynamic languages, with user interfaces that are rendered in HTML, and have severely limited local file systems.  Hard to imagine a more different world, but that’s what I’ve been doing most of this year.

This new world revolves around developing in HTML5, Javascript and CSS and packaging that up into applications that will run on a variety of devices. It has and continues to be a huge learning curve, one that is taking a lot of time and resources.

There was no way I was going to jump into the deep end and try to redevelop Surfulater, as I had way, way to much to learn first. So after much prodding from an old friend I began work on a project with him to create a range of iPad (Tablet) applications. Apart from taking quite a long time the results so far are great, with the first app nearing completion.

In essence I’ve designed and built an application that my partner Stefan will use to generate applications.  So there are two actual applications: the Builder that he uses and the Client Apps that the builder creates and that we’ll sell.

Both of these are written in HTML5, CSS and Javascript. The builder is by far the most complex, using a client-side database, HTML5 templating, local file system access, remote server uploads and downloads etc. It uses jQuery, jQueryUI, Knockout.js and a range of other Javascript plugins and libraries. It is pretty slick and easy to use, enabling Stefan to produce iPad applications quickly.

The end-user client applications use jQuery Mobile and jQuery and are packaged using Phonegap and other tools.

All up I’ve written around 7,000 lines of Javascript so far and have learnt one heck of a lot along the way. And this time around I’ve designed everything to work in any language! There is still some way to go before we’ll be ready to start shipping the first apps, but we are making excellent progress. Stefan was only able to start using the first Alpha release of the Builder about 6 weeks ago and has already completed the first application, which happens to the biggest and most complex of the series of applications we’ll be producing.

On the side I’m am spending as much time as possible researching ways to accomplish my ideal Surfulater type app, with information replicated on all devices. To say this is complicated is an understatement. The research alone is very much one step forward, two steps back, however I’ve never been one to be easily deterred.

So that should give everyone a clearer picture of what is happening in my world at this time.

If I don’t post again before Xmas, and given my track record of late I probably won’t, I wish you and yours a very happy and safe xmas and all the best for 2012.

Neville

PS. It’s nice to have blogged again.

Q) To change your mind and continue using Surfulater we would have to?
For the price of this software the trial is extremely limiting for us to determine its true useability.
The standards nowadays for the retail software industry is to allow the prospective buyer to truely test drive a full product’s potential during the 21 day trial period; especially with the restrictive return policy of your company.

Here’s my problem. The one and only limitation in the Trial Version of Surfulater is that it doesn’t allow you to create new knowledge bases. It comes with a Knowledge Base which includes some sample content which you can delete if you want. There are no restrictions on the number of articles you can add to this Knowledge Base, the type of articles you can create, nor any other limitations of any kind. That said I agree it would be better if you could create new empty KB’s and we may well enable this at some point, but I hardly consider it’s a show stopper.

The other comment which really got to me is “with the restrictive return policy of your company” – huh! If you look at our ‘Buy Now‘ page you will see:

Return/Refund Policy

Please download and evaluate the Surfulater Free Trial before purchasing, to avoid unnecessary refunds. Our FAQ page has information on extending your free trial period. If for any reason you aren’t 100% satisfied with your purchase, contact us within 30 days for a full refund.

I must be missing something, but how on earth is this restrictive?

The Feedback Form ends as follows:

If you would like us to contact you please enter your E-mail address.

Unfortunately most people don’t afford us the opportunity to respond, so there’s nothing we can do other than write blog posts like this one. (:

-Neville

It appears to me that Firefox (which was my browser of choice) is loosing its edge. Firefox Extensions have always been hard to write and hark back to it’s Netscape days, which seems like a lifetime ago, yet little has changed. And even though certain improvements were made with how extensions are packaged in FF V4, I was unable to get this to work with the updated Surfulater Extension. Comments on the Mozilla bugs repository indicated the issue I faced was known and should be addressed one day. I was left quite unimpressed. From reading Mozilla PR material I get the impression they feel a need to follow Google Chrome, instead of carving out their own ground.

I’ll mention two aspects of Chrome I find invaluable. First the unified Address and Search bar, one place to type whatever I’m interested in. Another is the Session Buddy Extension which keeps track of the multiple Chrome Browser windows I have open, their size and position and all of the Tabs open in each Window.

One big pet hate with Firefox is the obtrusive update process for new releases and extension updates. Oh and how new releases frequently break extensions, which in turn forces developers to do work they shouldn’t have to and probably don’t want to. Glad I got that of my chest.

The final comment I’ll make about Google Chrome and this is a very big one for many developers, is that it uses the Webkit Browser Engine. The reason this is so important is that Webkit is used as the core for the Web Browsers in all Apple iPhone and Google Android phones. In other words in 90+ percent of all smart phones. It is also used in the Apple Safari Web Browser.

For developers writing Web Applications it is so, so much easier to focus ones efforts on a single browser engine, especially one that is moving ahead so rapidly in adopting the many important new HTML 5 capabilities. Oh and Chromes built-in Javascript Debugger is a truly wonderful thing.

These are some of the reasons why my Web Browser of choice is now Google Chrome.

Have a great week everyone.
Nevile

I used to be pretty sceptical about cloud computing and web applications, however I am slowly but surely changing my thinking and I am using some web applications on a very regular basis. The Web, its capabilities, development tools, languages and libraries have come an awfully long way in the past 5+ years, yet it still feels like we are just at the beginning of much bigger things.

To me the most important benefit of ‘the cloud’ is the ability to have access to ‘my information’ and applications on any PC that has a Web Browser and an Internet connection. Further this also encompasses use on my amazing new Android Smartphone.

Now as wonderful as this brave new world of cloud computing is, there are some show-stopping downsides. At least four come to mind:

1. When you don’t have an Internet connection, most likely all work stops.
2. When you have a slow Internet connection, productivity slows accordingly.
3. The company whose Web Application or Service you now rely on pulls the plug on it or they change it so much as it no longer meets your needs.
4. Same company goes out of business.

As an end user what concerns me most here is that I no longer have “my information” in my own hands (it is somewhere in the cloud) and I potentially have no way to move forward in the worst case scenarios of points 3 & 4. I might have many years worth of important information that I can no longer access or utilize. So to use ‘the cloud’ you must have absolute trust and faith in the companies or organizations providing you with whatever services you are consuming.

To my mind the ideal scenario is to have a combination of desktop software with “my information” on my PC that is synchronized to ‘the cloud’ and to other PC’s. Then take this one step further and have a Web Application that I can use in any Web Browser on any PC to gain access to “my information” for the times when I am not at “my PC”.

This gives me the best of both worlds – I can keep working whether I have an Internet connection or not, I get ownership back of “my information”, I can continue to use the desktop application no matter what happens to the company who provided it and I will have better prospects of migrating “my information” to a replacement application should the need arise. If the company does go out of business or kills the application I will loose the Web Application and probably the synchronization capabilities, however I still have the Desktop App and “my information” on my PC, so the situation is nowhere near as dire.

This is very much the direction I want to see Surfulater head in, allowing our users to access and utilize their information wherever they are, while keeping their own local databases and being able to access same regardless of whether they have an Internet connection or not. And of course having their local databases synchronized across the PC’s they have Surfulater installed on, work, home etc.

I’d been thinking about writing this blog post for some time and finally hit the tipping point when I read on the weekend that there is talk of Yahoo closing their Delicious bookmarking service down. This appears to have created a degree of panic amongst Delicious users who are now searching for a replacement service. Some have imported their Delicious data into Surfulater, however their Tags aren’t coming across because the XBEL format does not include Tags in its specification.  We should be able to update Surfulater to resolve this.

Merry Xmas to all and keep on Surfulater’n.

Neville

PS. We’ve got a great Xmas special running with a 50% discount on Surfulater – see image at top right of the Surfulater.com web pages. This is our very first Xmas special, I thought it was time we did. Do tell your friends, family and colleagues.

• Does it solve my particular problem.
• Is it easy to use.
• Does it have the set of features and capabilities that I need.
• Will it continue to meet my needs as I become more adept.
• Does it include good documentation.
• Will it save me time (will I be more productive).
• Is it worth the cost (both financial and time to learn & use).
• Is it robust and well supported.
• Also see: Before purchasing software

Software developers must take all of these issues and more into account when we design our products. I’ve specifically not used the term software or program here as a product is a lot more than just the software. Unfortunately there are quite a few software developers that don’t realize this.

Basically we perform a juggling act, continually weighing up the pros and cons of everything we do. New feature requests must be assessed on the value they add to the product, how broad the interest for our users might be, the impact they have on usability and added complexity, extra documentation and additional support (costs).  See my Creeping Featuritis post for more on this.

So developing a product that ticks all of the right boxes  is always challenging. Exposure to customer needs, our overall depth of experience and an affinity with the product all help.

Let me finish by telling you that this was not a post that I had intended to write. Instead I was going to write about a review of Surfulater that has recently been published. The review was undertaken by three different people responding to the same set of questions. The outcome is quite interesting and clearly shows how various people can view the same product so differently. It also demonstrates the difficulty there is in ticking all the right boxes.  I’ll hold over linking to the review for another post.

Neville

We receive customer feedback on a regular basis and it is usually very positive, however we rarely receive critical comments from people who have tried Surfulater and found it wanting, or simply doesn’t meet their needs. These critical comments are just as, if not even more important to us, ensuring we are doing the best we can to evolve Surfulater to satisfy broader community needs.  I am hopeful this new uninstall feedback form will give us some new found insights.

Flipping back to positive feedback, Jason Ebaugh, Founder of APIS Scientific sent me the following e-mail last week, which I am reproducing here in full with his permission.

I found out about surfulater on http://www.outlinersoftware.com/

I have been using it less than 24 hours, but have done a lot of research on the web in that time (as is typical for me).  Even in this short amount of time, it is obvious that Surfulator is a lot slicker than my previous method. I have found myself looking back thinking how much faster things could have gone if I would have been using it all along.

So, so far, so good!
JasonE

I have to say that feedback such as this is great to receive and helps reinforce that we have developed a good product that people find truly useful. Thanks again Jason.

The Outliner Software web site focuses on discussing Outlining software, however it also ventures into Information Management software and related areas. A number of the regulars there are Surfulater users, so you will see it mentioned from time to time. I also make the occasional appearance.

All feedback is important to us, whether you are new to Surfulater, just checking it out or have been using it for ages, we do want to hear from you. Our new Support Center has a Suggestions Category which is a good place to start.

Neville

I did a quick evaluation of the most popular WordPress Social Bookmarking services and widgets and SexyBookmarks rated highly and looked pretty. Unlike most other programs of its type, it didn’t use any 3rd party service/web site for its operation, which was another big plus.

Shortly after the launch of the new blog I received an e-mail from one of our Surfulater users informing me that the SexyBookmarks Facebook sharing option wasn’t working. I checked and he was right. Upon further investigation I found that the Twitter share wasn’t working correctly either. I tried contacting Shareaholic via. their Bug Report web page, however I had an uneasy feeling that this may not have been working, as it never acknowledged that my submission actually went through. I tried a few times, then waited a week and bit to give them a reasonable amount of time to respond. I’d still not heard back so I used their Contact form and explained that I thought they may have a problem with their Bug report form and explaining the problems I was having with SexyBookmarks. The contact form worked and my submission was acknowledged.

I’ve waited another two weeks and still not heard a peep from the SexyBookmarks folks.  Upon checking their blog I see their last post was back in May this year. Maybe SexyBookmarks was more popular than they expected and they have been a bit overwhelmed by it all, who knows.

At the end of the day I certainly can’t expect to get any assistance from them. After all they’ve provided this for free, and all it has cost me is some of my time. I’m sure we’ve all dealt with companies where we’ve paid good money for a product and still received lousy service. It really is quite frustrating when this happens.

My take away from this is that anyone who develops a product or service, be it free or paid needs to give serious thought to how they will provide support, and the resources they will need to do so. Customer satisfaction is more important than ever today, if you want to succeed. The Internet has been a great leveler between companies and what they produce and the consumers that use their products. Dissatisfaction spreads like wildfire and rebuilding customer satisfaction and loyalty is a long and costly exercise.

So Sexybooks has been removed and replaced by AddThis which appears to be working well so far. I’ve also added the AddThis social sharing widget to the footer of all pages on the Surfulater Web site, which is a nice plus.

The blog software we use is the ever popular WordPress and we had fallen quite some way behind in updates, for the version we were using. Updating Web Server packages is not something I am fond of doing, so it is much easier to keep putting such tasks off. And that is something I am quite good at. In this specific case I am very pleased to say the entire upgrade process was painless and trouble free. I did lots of backups along the way in the clear expectation something would go wrong, but it didn’t!

Once the WordPress upgrade was complete it was time to upgrade the Blog sites theme to match the new Surfulater site theme. I have strayed a little and included a nice seductive banner image which I feel distinguishes the Blog from the actual Surfulater product site.

I’ve also taken this opportunity to add some enhancements, which I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. You will notice two things that stand out below each post.  The first is the social media sharing bar which most people will be familiar with. This enables you share a blog post with sites like Digg, Facebook, Google Buzz etc. or E-mail the details to a friend or colleague. It is simply a way of enabling you to help us tell more people about our great product, Surfulater.

The next new feature is the list of ‘Related Posts’ which you (only) see when viewing a post in full. ie. click on the post Title. Note that some posts may not have any related articles. These lists are automatically generated and some fine tuning may be required. However from the brief inspections I’ve done they seem quite good and will enhance blog usage. It has also dawned on me that this could be an interesting capability to include in Surfulater one day.

The Blog Sidebar now includes ‘lists of Recent Posts’ as well as ‘Recent Comments’. Note that ‘Recent Posts’ are also displayed in the footer area of each page on the main Surfulater site.

The WordPress upgrade was a major one which gives us a much enhanced package of features than we had previously.  We are already making good use of some of the new features and will do more as time permits. From a site administrators point of view the overall experience has jumped up a notch or four, which is great.

If you have any suggestions for improvements to the blog do let us now.

Neville

I am well aware of certain areas I’d like to see more work done on, and some further pages I’d like to see included. That said the new site is now far enough advanced for it to go live and replace the original site, which is what we’ve done. It is also time to get back to work on Surfulater itself.

Seasoned Surfulater’ers will notice the new Surfulater Support Center, which will in time completely replace the existing support forums. (At least that’s the plan). You will also notice it is devoid of content, which will be addressed as you start new discussions and as we build up the Knowledge Base/FAQ area. I’ll write more about this shortly, suffice to say it was time for a new start with package that better met our collective needs.

Another new and noteworthy addition is our Surfulater Mailing List which we’ll use as yet another way to keep in touch with you. And as a special bonus we are offering subscribers an instant discount when they activate their subscription. This is a great opportunity for your friends and colleagues to start using Surfulater, so please do tell them about it.

As is often the case this turned out to be a bigger project than we envisaged, however I really couldn’t be happier with the final result and with knowing that the core we’ve put together will serve us all well into the future.

We will receive the final production ready material in the next few days, and then need to embark on first of all modifying it to work with our newly chosen content management system (CMS), finalizing the design for the new site structure and then writing new content and rewriting existing content for it. It is hard to say how long this will all take, however I would love to see the new site up by mid May.

In order to meet the requirements of the new CMS we’ve had to upgrade several of the major software packages on our Web Server. This is work I do not like doing as something always seems to break when big changes (or sometimes even small ones) are made to Web servers. So this time our Forums, Issue Tracking system and some other stuff broke. I started upgrading the Web server on Friday last and then spent most of the weekend trying to get everything working properly again. The Forums were off-line for a day and by far caused the biggest technical headache. The Issue Tracker is still not working, but I have yet to take a serious look at it.

Now that the Web Server has had its big update and appears to be running quicker and better than ever, I have decided to upgrade the Forum software, which is also overdue. You may therefore see the Forum closed again in the coming days, though hopefully for just a short period. E-Mail support is of course available as always. So that’s the second lot of good news.

And if that’s not enough I’d also like to update the blog software and want to look at a new theme for it, as it is also due for a makeover.

All of this is about helping us to deliver a better user experience for visitors to our site, especially for our Surfulater Customers.

Some people think a software product is just the application you run. To us is it much more. It is a complete package that encompasses the software, documentation, support (both pre and post sales), the web site and the blog. We continue to strive to deliver the best package we can so that our users have a great experience using Surfulater.