i-tietz wrote:RamonS wrote:Inge, you really think that adding the ribbon is a selling point?
Unfortunately, yes.
We're living in a world where people voluntarily buy a new cell phone, smart phone or IPad every year, although their old one is still working! People simply wanna be up-to-date!
There's many people out there who buy software for different reasons than we do. For them the look of a GUI is important. If those people look at software and think that it is far behind current technology, then they don't buy it.
For example:
For years we had customers and potential customers asking us when we would offer our software using the .NET technology, which allows having tool windows docked or floating and when we would have the menu items opening tabs instead of windows ... they don't want to work with software that they consider "ugly".
I would say most of that is mythos, if not downright incorrect. I would consider two very important points.
Sure, "many people" are move by nells and whistles and fancy new chrome on their software, but the Flare audience is not "many people." The Flare audience is user assistance development professionals who want software that (a) works and (b) doesn't get in their way. Despite the new capabilities (HTML5, EPUB, etc.) and the apologists/enablers who see MadCap as never doing any wrong, the plain fact of the matter is that the new design and the new code for Flare 8 just plain fails on this basic level. Something as simple as being able to select multiple files in Content Explorer using well-established mouse-keyboard shortcuts is apparently not as important as slapping a garish, wasteful, and inefficient ribbon onto the UI. And there are endless problems with source control, a basic need for any developer. Never mind the sloppy coding that results in stealing more and more CPU cycles if you leave Flare running too long.
To equate .BET with docking or floating tool windows is simply not true. .NET is absolutely not required to make any of those things happen. Any customer that says they want "dot-net" for their tools merely demonstrates their cluelessness, doing nothing more than hopping on the buzzword bandwagon for their purchase checklist. .NET no more makes a product better than agile makes a coding team.
AS a user assistance development professional, I consider a ribbon "ugly." It's inefficiencies and its waste of screen real estate reduce my ability to be more productive. The stylistic flourishes impede my efficiency. And the saddest part is that Flare had a lot of the basics right. But Flare 8 seems to have been driven by marketing, not its audience needs, and it's pretty clear it was rushed to market well before it was ready. We nether want nor need pretty; we just want software that works right and works well.
I hope Anthony and Mike are listening.
P.S. Don't even get me started on the abomination that is the Flare 8 "User Guide." As a documentation development tool, you'd think we'd hold its documentation to a higher standard, but a whole book in itself could be written about what's wrong with the Flare 8 docs. In fact, the Flare 8 docs are probably a good example of what NOT to do when developing user assistance. And where's the EPUB version? Why isn't the Flare team "eating its own dog food?"
did I really write that?): Do not run Flare in a VM without urgent neccessity.