QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.9.25 release available

I just posted the 3.9.25 release. You can download the bits here. 

This release really should be called 3.10 instead of 3.9.25. I'll have to take that up with the marketing deparment. Details on what's in the release can be found here. 

The biggest deal for this release has to be its support for Visual Studio 2005. Earlier releases may work with VS 2005, but this is the first release that's been validated to work with it -- i.e. I have tested 3.9.25 with the retail release of VS 2005 and it works as expected. 3.9.25 has a number of other usability tweaks that should make things easier to use, etc. Comments are welcome.

3.9.25 is a free update for anyone whose license is less than 1 year old.

QVCS and QVCS-Pro 3.9.25.7 candidate release

I just posted the 3.9.25.7 candidate build. You can download it here. 

A I noted yesterday, this is now code complete for the 3.9.25 build that will be published on Jan. 31.

This build has been tested with Visual Studio 2005, and works as expected. I'll be updating the web site FAQ page with some tips on how to get things to work with VS 2005. The most important thing to get right is to make sure the your project is first visible to QWin as being under version control, just like with VS 2003, and other IDE's.

The other important thing for VS 2005 is that QVCS must be installed on a local drive -- VS 2005 requires it. The FAQ will include some guidance on how to install QVCS locally, and still use a network share for your qwin.ini (project definitions), user .ini files, and your QVCS.License file.

More tweaks for upcoming 3.9.25 release

I'm putting the finishing touches on the upcoming 3.9.25 release -- and recovering from a cold. (I guess one of the problems of working at home is that taking a sick day has a different meaning than when you drive to the office.... so I had the laptop upstairs instead of working in the colder basement.).

Today, I added some final tweaks: support for the Windows Application key. That's the key that is meant to mimic the behavior you get when you right click the mouse. I might have time to put in another thing or two, but I'm otherwise ready to declare this baby code complete. I'll update the candidate build sometime tomorrow so you can get a preview if you'd like.

In the next QVCS and QVCS-Pro release

I've been busy with the next QVCS and QVCS-Pro release. I'm shooting for a release by month end.

This release again has a usability focus:

• The mouse scroll wheel now finally works for the Revision Information pane and the File Information pane.
• The workfile location is now always displayed above the file list instead of showing up on the status bar at the time of directory navigation.
• I've discarded the greyed background when filters are active, and replaced it with a slowly blinking indicator on the toolbar.
• There is a new 'Revision Detail' pane that supports 'copy to clipboard' operations like a standard edit box.

Under the hood, there are several changes:

• The ini file code has been reworked so that it is less disk intensive. This helps improve startup and shutdown times slightly.
• The startup code has been changed so that you can install QVCS locally, but still have it 'point' to copies of your license file, and qwin.ini, etc. that are located on a shared directory. This change is required for Visual Studio 2005 support (still in testing). In addition, a number of users have requested this functionality to help decrease network traffic.

You can get an early taste of these changes by downloading my 'work in progress' builds here. These 'candidate' builds don't have their docs updated yet, but I am using them internally. If you want to try -- make sure to backup your existing installation first. To install, just unzip the candidate over your existing installation directory, or unzip into an empty directory, and copy your existing .ini files and license file into the new directory. If you want to try out the 'local install/remote qwin.ini' behavior, send me e-mail for some instructions on how to get that to work.

Usability, Usability, Usability

I just got off the phone with a QVCS user. He was having problems getting a new project defined. The basic problem was that he was failing to fill in the access list on one of the new project wizard pages. This is something that has been in the product for a long time, but it got me to thinking: what if lots of prospective users run into the same problem, and just give up, thinking that the program is broken? There are probably a number of other usability land mines out there that I'm blissfully unaware of.

This is no small problem. Back when I worked at UPS , we invested a lot of time and money in usability studies for the UPS OnLine product (I'm not sure what UPS calls the product these days, but it is a Windows application that UPS provides 'for free' to their lower volume customers that allows them to print shipping labels, track packages, and send electronic manifests to UPS for both tracking and billing purposes).

Quma lacks the resources of a UPS, so I have to rely on user reports and my own judgement when it comes to usability. The problem with defining the access list is clearly not a user error, but a usability problem: the program should make it more obvious what action the user is required to perform. How many other usability 'gotchas' are there that turn users away? I'm listening.