Well, my attempt to keep people from shooting themselves in the foot when upgrading to the beta version of ReceiptWallet has back fired. I've had few people download it (partly because of mistakes I made) and others have had problems reading the text. So, I've relented and now allow automatic updates. However, the first time a new beta version is run, the user is presented with a warning that hopefully makes things clear.
I'll see how this pans out in terms of people trying the beta.
Comments
February 4th, 2008
Tyler
Is your beta being fed into the main update stream, like users will get a notice in the program that their is a new beta out?
February 4th, 2008
Scott Gruby
If the user chooses “Look for Beta versions and Releases” in the preferences, then yes. I don’t like to post every new beta version to VersionTracker and MacUpdate as it looks like some developers just shove stuff up there without testing it. I spend a long time testing my own stuff and this lets others get a sneak peak before I release. While it doesn’t get me as much publicity and as many testers, I think it creates a more polished look. I may be completely mistaken on this, but I see developers throw their stuff out there immediately after it compiles just to get a higher position in the update listings. Also, with a growing user base, I want people to take a little more caution when using beta versions.
February 6th, 2008
Tyler
Ah ok, I think that’s good.
February 6th, 2008
Scott Gruby
It seems that people don’t understand the term “beta” as well as my warning. I got email from someone today that lost all his data and he was doing his taxes, so he needed everything. He did have a backup, but why try a beta right when you need the info?
February 9th, 2008
Tyler
Why are people losing all their info? I mean if theirs nothing programmed into the software to go thru and delete their files, why would it do that?
February 9th, 2008
Scott Gruby
When I say lose all their info, I mean lose all the ReceiptWallet data. If the data file gets corrupted (it contains an index to all the files it stores), it requires a lot of work to recreate it. There was one bug in the last beta that could “corrupt” a data file. While I could repair this by hand, to those that it affected, it looked like they lost all their data.