v0.2

[steve501]

Any news on when we can expect the official release?

[HMinhas]

I am wondering as well when v0.2.0 will be released. I thought it was end of the month. I will keep waiting :-)

[deth4uall]

Think of any time from now when you think it will come out, then push that back a month... You will get the official release date from that... ;) When they do get it out it will be awesome, its just that Jason is the only one who has the plan of how the project needs to be done in his head... So yeh, good work AC team, I hope it comes out soon...

[Jason]

Think of any time from now when you think it will come out, then push that back a month... You will get the official release date from that... ;) When they do get it out it will be awesome, its just that Jason is the only one who has the plan of how the project needs to be done in his head... So yeh, good work AC team, I hope it comes out soon...

lol, I must say this has been pretty accurate in the past. We are trying as hard as possible to release this week though.

[deth4uall]

I would like to see that... :) Good luck and keep up the work mate... I am going to be writing this as a full integration into my new 2.0 version of my game...

[TSilva]

So does the v0.2 keep set for release this week?

[steve501]

No news for long time :-(

[Jason]

No news for long time :-(

It's coming! We want to make sure everything is perfect before a public release.

[MBenjaminsen]

when is it gonna be released ? Last message was the end of the week and a new week has started already :roll:

[chattasubito]

when is it gonna be released ? Last message was the end of the week and a new week has started already :roll:

Unfortunately not only that man... :( Actually:

"We're aiming for v0.2 to be released by the end of this month (July)" (26 days ago)
"We are so excited to show everyone the highly anticipated v0.2 update. It should be out this week!" (6 days ago)

... and now it's almost *THREE MONTHS* since the last release (which was just a bug-fix one, not even a major version...).

Considering that some of the "big features" promised in v0.2 where already partially implemented in v0.131 ("Announcements" were already there just not publicly enabled and some "Chatroom code" was already there too) I really wonder what the ArrowChat team did in the last 90 days...

As I already said in another post, as a customer I'm very disappointed by the AC team which did take my (our) money for a beta software even if they advertise (and sell it) as a fully developed chat system, "the best there is". The biggest problem is that their development process is incredibly slow, months and months to add features that can be easily added in a week of work (to say the most). And if we want to say it all, as a customer I still wonder where are some of the "implemented features" advertised in the homepage like "Customize your ArrowChat with optional animations such as slideIn, slideDown, fadeIn, fadeOut, and bounce" ( http://www.arrowchat.com/index.php?do=features )...

Anyways man... we just have to take Jason words from the Forum:
"That being said, we're aiming for the end of this month on v0.2 and the end of next month for v1.0" (Jul 22, 2010).

So don't be sad because we'll get v1.0 (with all the features!) in just 2 weeks from now (who's gonna believe this?)! But we got a nice screenshot in the meantime... :D

[VaggoLena1327]

I keep visiting the site everyday to see if maybe the new version is released, but I do know one thing
"Patience is a virtue"..guys we have to be patient. How long it takes them should not matter as much as having developers who want to release something and give us something that is worth every dollar we paid and even more.
They have given us the nicest, and cleanest chat out there..and a software that has a lot of potential. All this from a company that is still young. I know we all are waiting for the release..it will come when it comes, and I know with these guys, it will be even better.

[TSilva]

I am hoping it is coming this week...

[chattasubito]

"Patience is a virtue"..guys we have to be patient. How long it takes them should not matter as much as having developers who want to release something and give us something that is worth every dollar we paid and even more.

Patience... sure. You know at first I had many patience with ArrowChat and I used to write a few messages to Jason too to report bugs (actually I also shared with him some small code changes to fix some little bugs). But now my patience is over. I want to remind you that *WE PAID MONEY* for this, we are not talking about a open source free software, this is a commercial software. Take this huge bug for example:

"Smiles not displayed when sent".

Every people who send a "smile" can't see it displayed in the chat window without a page refresh. This is a bug present in ArrowChat since the *very first* version, another company would have fixed a (huge) bug like this in a few days after the first release with a fast bug-fix release. Now we are near September 2010, it's almost 6 months the bug is there and they still didn't care to fix it (and as far as I can see in the release notes it won't be fixed even in v0.2 release, if we ever get it). Some months ago I looked inside the ArrowChat code and fixed that problem by myself because the users of my community were complaining every day about that. How much did it take to find a solution to fix that problem? About 30 minutes of work. And I'm not a genius. Do you think is normal that customers who don't have the skills to fix bugs by themselves must wait over 6 months to have usable "smiles" for a product they paid money for? You must be kidding (actually I wasn't supposed to fix that bug by myself too, if I choose to pay money for a software is because I want is *THEY DO FIX BUGS*, not me).

I don't have anything against ArrowChat, I just don't like their lazy attitude and the fact that they don't care about customers at all. Today is August 17th, where's v0.2 we are all waiting for since 3 months now? I don't remember a single version where they meet "aimed" release dates. Jason said "we'll release v0.2 at the end of July and v1.0 at the end of August". Now we are near the end of August, where's v0.2? And where's v1.0 with all the promised features?

[Jason]

Chattasubito, I apologize for not being able to keep up with your demand. We are not a major software company yet and don't have the staff of something like vBulletin. Maybe after our revenue increases by 500k/yr we will be able to hire a few more people and keep up with your demanding schedule. Until then, we are doing the best we can.

By the way, there are over 70 bug reports that have all been answered but two; not including the bugs we fixed without reports. We've implemented about half or more of user suggested features so far. Lastly, we spend about 5 hours a day answering support tickets and often going out of our way to fix problems. If that's not caring about the customer, I don't know what is.

[agiles2303]

I wouldn't consider asking someone or a team to meet a schedule that they promised demanding. This has frankly become ridiculous. 3 months is unacceptable for a single person work group, let alone having multiple minds devoted to this.

[Jason]

I wouldn't consider asking someone or a team to meet a schedule that they promised demanding. This has frankly become ridiculous. 3 months is unacceptable for a single person work group, let alone having multiple minds devoted to this.

I wish you could come take over the company for a day and realize it is a lot more than just development. Our v0.2 update has a whole lot of work into it, and three months is not a bad time frame for that work. Our estimated release times have been ambitious, but maybe we're going the wrong route. Perhaps we should start projecting estimated release times six months apart and then surprise everyone with a release in one month.

[agiles2303]

I wouldn't consider asking someone or a team to meet a schedule that they promised demanding. This has frankly become ridiculous. 3 months is unacceptable for a single person work group, let alone having multiple minds devoted to this.

I wish you could come take over the company for a day and realize it is a lot more than just development. Our v0.2 update has a whole lot of work into it, and three months is not a bad time frame for that work. Our estimated release times have been ambitious, but maybe we're going the wrong route. Perhaps we should start projecting estimated release times six months apart and then surprise everyone with a release in one month.

Ambitious? Borderline insane, and I would love to take over your company for a day, except at the rate development goes what would one day accomplish? Not to mention I would have never started a business if I anticipated not being able to meet a reasonable schedule or at the very minimum my own schedule.

And as for your "We will say six months, and then surprise everyone with an update in one month." So far AC couldn't even meet that "secret one month" release date.

Maybe you should go with we'll tell them a year maybe... two... and release something quarterly.

This is the exact same problem Circuit City faced, they made promises they couldn't keep, became defensive with comments like "I wish you could come take over the company for a day.", until people got fed up and went else where with their business.

News flash, I AM A PAYING CUSTOMER, and regardless if you like me or what I say, you sure as hell like my money. This is not some open source, extend the users patience, as a business owner/manager you should be much more savvy and understanding of the business process, because if you were you would never in a this lifetime tell a customer something like that.

[chattasubito]

Chattasubito, I apologize for not being able to keep up with your demand. We are not a major software company yet and don't have the staff of something like vBulletin.

You need a "staff" to solve some bugs? Come on Jason, that's a few hours of work, you are not developing Gran Turismo 5 for PlayStation 3, one or two persons is more than enough for a chat system like this.

Maybe after our revenue increases by 500k/yr we will be able to hire a few more people and keep up with your demanding schedule. Until then, we are doing the best we can.

Fine. But I still don't understand why your team don't release daily/weekly *beta versions* of AC (with no support of course): people who want a stable version will not download these and wait for the official release, but at least who want to try beta version at "its own risk" can! Keep people waiting months and months to get an update hurt customers after paying money. And comparing vBulletin with ArrowChat makes no sense: vBulletin is already a complete and near bug-free software so updates can come even at slower times. ArrowChat instead "barely" works and give so many problems (smiles not send, huge slowdowns with large sites, messages disappear, etc.) so updates are quite urgent.

[chattasubito]

Perhaps we should start projecting estimated release times six months apart and then surprise everyone with a release in one month.

You must be joking.

Your "company" took *MY* (our) money 6 months ago for a software which simply *DOESN'T WORK* as advertised: ArrowChat doesn't work correctly and has so many problems which make at times the chat experience really terrible (sometimes is impossible to chat because messages don't show up without a page refresh or at times everything becomes super slow, even 2 minutes of wait to receive a message!). If now I can use AC on my site is only because I rewrote 99% of your code to make it work (both php and js). And that was a huge work for me because the AC code was so mess and bad written!!

If your "estimated release dates" are really 6 months like you say, fine, refund my money now because I'm not going to wait 6 months to get an update. And I think there are many customers angry like me in this Forum. Let me say Jason that your attitude is totally wrong, *WE PAID MONEY* and you must give us all (and fast) a working software. Otherwise refund everyone and start this business again when you have a more experienced staff who know how to code.

[mmlr38]

I'm not usually one to chime in on these type of "kick them while they're down" type of threads, but I too have to admit that I'm slightly irritated by very long delay of the release of v0.2.

I won't go as far as to say that AC doesn't care about their customers (it's obvious that they do), but I am very much questioning the competency of the AC coding team at this point. Being a web programmer and knowing quite a bit about PHP and AJAX, I know that there are problems that arise that aren't easy to solve. But the amount of delay time between releases of AC is becoming a bit concerning. I've never encountered a problem that took 3 months to solve, especially when there are multiple people working on it. Maybe the solution is to release smaller updates instead of trying to cram too much into one release? Or perhaps it's time to pursue a different solution to whatever is holding up the release of v0.2? I don't know.

I _really_ want AC to succeed at becoming the number one chat software on the market, and I still believe that they will. But something is likely going to need to change for that to happen. I tend to agree with Chattasubito that this software shouldn't require more than a team of a few people. Maybe AC has the wrong people on their team?