Today's Message Index:
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1. 02:51 PM - Re: Kitlog Pro Development (Matt Dralle)
2. 03:29 PM - Re: Re: Kitlog Pro Development (Bob Leffler)
3. 04:51 PM - Re: Re: Kitlog Pro Development (Ralph Finch)
Message 1
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| Subject: | Re: Kitlog Pro Development |
Well, there's a sad story about the history of the Kitlog Development cycle. After
I acquired the Kitlog Pro company, I enlisted the programmer that had been
doing some of the minor development on the product prior. I'd never met him
and we mostly only exchanged emails. I did speak to him on the phone on one
occasion. I gave him a huge, long, list of new features and enhancements that
many customers were wanting to see in Kitlog. It was tagged the 3.0 Version.
Keeping him working was always a challenge, but time passed and he worked through
nearly the whole list (I was paying him by the hour). At one point, he
subcontracted some of the tasks to an overseas code house (I suspect China, as
the spelling and grammar on some of the dialogs was atrocious). I finally got
a pre-release version to try and sure enough, every one of the features I'd
asked for was included. The bad news, most of them didn't work or didn't work
as expected. But worst, the whole program was completely unstable and crashed
constantly. Obviously, he had done little if any testing along the way. At
this point, I had to make a decision. I had already spent a substantial amount
for the development such as it was. It would easily take that much or more
to "fix" everything and I'd still be fairly suspect of the quality. I decided
to take a step back at that point and come up with a new game plan. I had to
sell quite a few more copies of Kitlog to recoup the cost of all that wasted
development.
Well, the good news is that I've found an awesome new developer that has lots of
experience in this coding environment. In fact, I work with him face to face
on another job. So, we decided to just take the 2.0 code base and start working
from there. The biggest issue right now is the installer and compatibility
with Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. These have been addressed and I'm testing
a new installer currently that is working very well and has a super smooth
installation across all of the versions of Windows. There are also a number
of user interface enhancements including the ability to just drag and drop pictures
on a given construction log. Printing reliability is also vastly improved.
There are also lots of little tweaks that make things work better. This
version will likely be dubbed "2.1". Once that's out the door and working,
we have some great plans to add some of the other often-asked-for features like
spell checking, rich text, larger text fields, more pictures per log entry,
etc. It will likely be dubbed "3.0".
Version 2.1 will be a free update. Version 3.0 will likely be a paid upgrade.
Best regards,
Matt Dralle
Matronics / Kitlog Pro
At 08:15 PM 12/12/2012 Wednesday, you wrote:
>Hear, hear. I too would like to see an update to Kitlog Pro. I'd certainly consider
paying for a major upgrade. If Matt will consider this I hope he solicits
input from users to decide on features.
>
>Ralph Finch
>
>
>On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 3:44 PM, DeWitt (Dee) Whittington <<mailto:dee.whittington@gmail.com>dee.whittington@gmail.com> wrote:
>Matt,
>
>I've donated to you for years. I and my three partners continue to build our Sportsman
and hopefully will fly in the Spring. However, this year I held off donating
because I'm waiting for an update to the Kitlog Pro computer program you
own. When you purchased Kitlog Pro, you said you would clean it up and make
it easier to use. As of now the interface is really clunky and it cannot handle
multiple builders of a single project, something that in my experience is not
uncommon.
>
>Have you decided such improvement of Kitlog Pro is not something you are willing
to spend time on? If you did I would enthusiastically endorse it to other builders
and start donating again.
>
>Dee Whittington
>
Matt G Dralle | Matronics | 581 Jeannie Way | Livermore | CA | 94550
925-606-1001 V | 925-606-6281 F | dralle@matronics.com Email
http://www.matronics.com/ WWW | Featuring Products For Aircraft
Message 2
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| Subject: | Re: Kitlog Pro Development |
So is there an ETA for 2.1?
Bob
Sent from my iPad
On Dec 13, 2012, at 5:49 PM, Matt Dralle <dralle@matronics.com> wrote:
>
>
> Well, there's a sad story about the history of the Kitlog Development cycle.
After I acquired the Kitlog Pro company, I enlisted the programmer that had been
doing some of the minor development on the product prior. I'd never met him
and we mostly only exchanged emails. I did speak to him on the phone on one
occasion. I gave him a huge, long, list of new features and enhancements that
many customers were wanting to see in Kitlog. It was tagged the 3.0 Version.
Keeping him working was always a challenge, but time passed and he worked
through nearly the whole list (I was paying him by the hour). At one point, he
subcontracted some of the tasks to an overseas code house (I suspect China,
as the spelling and grammar on some of the dialogs was atrocious). I finally
got a pre-release version to try and sure enough, every one of the features I'd
asked for was included. The bad news, most of them didn't work or didn't work
as expected. But worst, the whole program was comp!
> letely unstable and crashed constantly. Obviously, he had done little if any
testing along the way. At this point, I had to make a decision. I had already
spent a substantial amount for the development such as it was. It would easily
take that much or more to "fix" everything and I'd still be fairly suspect
of the quality. I decided to take a step back at that point and come up with
a new game plan. I had to sell quite a few more copies of Kitlog to recoup
the cost of all that wasted development.
>
> Well, the good news is that I've found an awesome new developer that has lots
of experience in this coding environment. In fact, I work with him face to face
on another job. So, we decided to just take the 2.0 code base and start working
from there. The biggest issue right now is the installer and compatibility
with Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. These have been addressed and I'm
testing a new installer currently that is working very well and has a super smooth
installation across all of the versions of Windows. There are also a number
of user interface enhancements including the ability to just drag and drop
pictures on a given construction log. Printing reliability is also vastly improved.
There are also lots of little tweaks that make things work better. This
version will likely be dubbed "2.1". Once that's out the door and working,
we have some great plans to add some of the other often-asked-for features like
spell checking, rich text, larger text fields, mor!
> e pictures per log entry, etc. It will likely be dubbed "3.0".
>
> Version 2.1 will be a free update. Version 3.0 will likely be a paid upgrade.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Matt Dralle
> Matronics / Kitlog Pro
>
>
>
> At 08:15 PM 12/12/2012 Wednesday, you wrote:
>> Hear, hear. I too would like to see an update to Kitlog Pro. I'd certainly consider
paying for a major upgrade. If Matt will consider this I hope he solicits
input from users to decide on features.
>>
>> Ralph Finch
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 3:44 PM, DeWitt (Dee) Whittington <<mailto:dee.whittington@gmail.com>dee.whittington@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Matt,
>>
>> I've donated to you for years. I and my three partners continue to build our
Sportsman and hopefully will fly in the Spring. However, this year I held off
donating because I'm waiting for an update to the Kitlog Pro computer program
you own. When you purchased Kitlog Pro, you said you would clean it up and make
it easier to use. As of now the interface is really clunky and it cannot handle
multiple builders of a single project, something that in my experience is
not uncommon.
>>
>> Have you decided such improvement of Kitlog Pro is not something you are willing
to spend time on? If you did I would enthusiastically endorse it to other
builders and start donating again.
>>
>> Dee Whittington
>
>
>
> Matt G Dralle | Matronics | 581 Jeannie Way | Livermore | CA | 94550
> 925-606-1001 V | 925-606-6281 F | dralle@matronics.com Email
> http://www.matronics.com/ WWW | Featuring Products For Aircraft
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Message 3
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| Subject: | Re: Kitlog Pro Development |
This is good news. However, is there any chance of the database being
accessible from server-land ("the cloud")? It would be great to add and
edit entries from an iPad, for instance. I realize that would be a lot of
extra work but it would be nice.
More realistically, I'd really like more powerful online search
capabilities. It would be fantastic to find descriptions and photos easily
of the task you're working on. Anyway thanks for letting us know of this
and we look forward to the changes.
Ralph Finch
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