I agree that this is long overdue. But I also know that there are
aspects of this problem that cry out for a wholesale rewrite of the
application. For an application as large and full of legacy code as
Freeway, that is an investment not to be trifled with.
Don’t get me wrong, I want this feature as much as the next person.
And I know that Freeway “hears” us and knows how embarrassing it is
in this day and age not to have this. Especially when there are
applications being written left and right in Cocoa (by 15-year-old
kids) that have this feature.
Walter
On Oct 8, 2008, at 8:18 PM, JDW wrote:
“Company policy not to discuss future features”? Give me a break.
More companies use that as a cop-out for complacency than I care to
think about. And I do not make this statement as an attack on
SoftPress or a personal attack on anyone. I say these words as an
attack on “all defensive remarks” (or “excuses”) about why we do
NOT have Multiple Undos.
I’ve been a FW user and lover since 1999 (FW2). I am friends with
some at SoftPress, and I honestly must say that I love them
dearly. SoftPress is an Macintosh software innovator and the
company will continue to innovate. But the fact remains that we do
not have multiple Undos (or a History feature like Adobe apps) yet,
despite the requests make over the last 9 years or so. Hence our
need to pound even harder at the door of SoftPress until the
feature is implemented. No, not pound “until we are heard.” For
SoftPress hears us loud and clear now and has heard us for years.
They simply need to hear “more voices” to make them bump the
feature up higher on their priority list. And yes, I have no
doubts whatsoever that there is such a priority list.
The single most important feature of Freeway at this point, aside
from making CSS Layout sensible and easy to use as table layout for
“the rest of us,” is Multiple Undos (or a History feature). Those
of you who want it, keep this thread alive!
Be that as it may, Walter, the fact remains that FW4 was a major change to FW above and beyond the GUI tweaks. Yet, multiple Undos was not implemented. Why? Obviously due to the lack of time in light of the need to get FW4 out the door and into the hands of FW lovers worldwide in a reasonable time.
So yes, I am aware of the work involved. But looking at the big picture again, we have been asking for this for at least 9 years. Major rewrite or no, that is N-I-N-E Y-E-A-R-S!
My day job involves helping companies use Web tech to support their customers and build community interaction.
Press and competitors will already be well aware of the product’s weakness. Any acknowledgement that the company is working on it is not going make competitors suddenly rush to implement multiple undo, or make the press suddenly leap on a problem that is well documented. Neither is it going to make existing customers irate to know that they are looking at this (even without the promise of delivery date).
All it would do would make the company look interested in its customers’ and potential customers’ requirements.
But anyway, I’ve yattered on enough.
On 8 Oct 2008, 11:16 pm, Bin-Ra wrote:
Well anything they say can be picked up by press or competitors or perhaps
opens to a loss of goodwill with customers who can become irate and
difficult if they are set up with expectations that are not met.
But whatever … I expect it is simply company policy to not discuss
whatever features are in the pipeline or indeed … are not.
No there isn’t and there probably won’t be for some time,
unfortunately. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong, though. There are major logistical issues with implementing this feature because of
FW’s unique design model. It’s not a simple procedure as it is with
most apps or they would have implemented it ages ago.
Todd
On Mar 5, 2009, at 8:11 AM, Christopher Noble wrote:
Anyone know whether the new version has multiple undo yet?
I realize that it’s not an easy code change to make, but then again, this isn’t just a request for an aesthetic change. This is a very important, seriously needed feature, particularly when a couple accidental changes are made or when you make a couple changes to ‘try’ something and realize the changes aren’t going to work.
If nothing else, even an ‘autosave’ feature that would allow you to save, at certain intervals, so you can go back 5 minutes or 10 or more to a previous version of the site.
While I am still in ‘Trial’ mode with this software, it is an absolutely stunning omission. I want to jump ship from another app I have been working in for 10+ years (their code is out of date), but a “1 undo” software package is like flipping a coin to see if you’re going to get tasered.
No serious pro-quality app has only one undo (that I know of).
Totally agree…one slip and Boommmm!!! Come on Softpress, it’s like working in photoshop 3.
On 1 Sep 2010, at 06:53, Bruce Colgate wrote:
Another Bump…
While I am still in ‘Trial’ mode with this software, it is an absolutely stunning omission. I want to jump ship from another app I have been working in for 10+ years (their code is out of date), but a “1 undo” software package is like flipping a coin to see if you’re going to get tasered.
No serious pro-quality app has only one undo (that I know of).
Not that I want to disrupt your nice list here, but it’s not the first and won’t be the last to this problem. The last list had a link tipp that I wan’t to refresh here, called forever save.
I know it wont will change anything on basics here, but I stopped to invest more than 5 Minutes of time in things that can’t be changed in timescale we wish.
Walter and Keith in that list already declared, that the basics (the core) have to be rewritten and that’s enough to me personal (and I know nothing much), to understand what this will mean - seek a workaround and to say very, very later:
“Do you remember these times?”
Thomas
PS: Ask Walter, he started in somewhere Verision 2.
PS: Ask Walter, he started in somewhere Verision 2.
Walter, like me, started with the first public beta. I think it was
0.97 or something!
We’ve lived with the one-save issue since 1997. As Thomas said,
Softpress have already stated a few times here and there, getting
multiple saves into the foundations of something started when OS X
wasn’t even a glint in Apple’s eye is no simple undertaking.
As the saying goes, to get there you wouldn’t start from here.
Interesting. Lack of undo’s doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe because, as a completely independent freelancer who’s been working in a rural-home-office support-community-vacuum for 15 years, I’m accustomed to having to figure things out as I go?
I can’t afford “playing with it” time when on the clock. My billing would be astronomical! I use late night personal projects as my self-tutorials. Then attempt, fairly successfully, to implement those techniques when on the clock.
Years of the now-dreaded XPress corrupting its own files taught me to make and save multiple recursive Versions of any large projects. My last client project got up to v7.0.4. No big deal. At that rate, my client enjoyed seeing multiple versions online, to compare design concept changes. (Not that all versions stayed online throughout.)
There are plenty of insufficiencies in FW that I would like to see corrected / improved before worrying about multiple undo’s for those who work by experiment.
Very pious, who says we are all working in experiment, single undo is not good enough however you work unless we all become as good as you!
On 1 Sep 2010, at 13:45, Bucky Edgett wrote:
Interesting. Lack of undo’s doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe because, as a completely independent freelancer who’s been working in a rural-home-office support-community-vacuum for 15 years, I’m accustomed to having to figure things out as I go?
I can’t afford “playing with it” time when on the clock. My billing would be astronomical! I use late night personal projects as my self-tutorials. Then attempt, fairly successfully, to implement those techniques when on the clock.
Years of the now-dreaded XPress corrupting its own files taught me to make and save multiple recursive Versions of any large projects. My last client project got up to v7.0.4. No big deal. At that rate, my client enjoyed seeing multiple versions online, to compare design concept changes. (Not that all versions stayed online throughout.)
There are plenty of insufficiencies in FW that I would like to see corrected / improved before worrying about multiple undo’s for those who work by experiment.
Oh, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not good, I’m ignorant and timid. So I don’t go any further than one baby step at a time, testing each step!
I’d much rather see, for instance, the Temp Styles and their poor CSS implementation addressed. Just a case of each for each, with some oddballs like me having different opinions.
Saving multiple version is definitely the way to go as David has said.
Version 1, Version 2 etc. etc. saving a version often safeguards against corrupt files and especially when a client says “Actually, can we have the homepage how it was before!”
Something I’ve used in the past with large projects is to place the
Freeway file in my synced DropBox folder (http://www.dropbox.com).
Every time I save the Freeway file a version is automatically backed
up to DropBox’s cloud storage (they use Amazon’s S3 service) so I can
roll back to any of my previous revisions quickly and easily.
The basic account is free and gives you 2GB of storage.
Regards,
Tim.
AND WHAT IF YOU ARE EXPERIMENTING OR DESIGNING ON THE FLY AND YOU WANT TO STEP BACK FREQUENTLY MORE THAN ONE STEP, HOW IS SAVING VERSIONS EVERY TWO COMMANDS PLAUSIBLE, AS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY IN THE THREAD, MOST OTHER PROGRAMS HAVE THIS, WHY NOT FW?
On 1 Sep 2010, at 20:32, Nathan Garner wrote:
Saving multiple version is definitely the way to go as David has said.
Version 1, Version 2 etc. etc. saving a version often safeguards against corrupt files and especially when a client says “Actually, can we have the homepage how it was before!”
That’s been explained a couple of times now. Harping on about it won’t
make it appear any quicker, though. =o(
Don’t think Softpress don’t hear you. I worked with the engineers on
documentation for Freeway 4 for a time, so I’ve seen the game from
both sides of the fence. They care passionately about Freeway, and you
can bet your bottom dollar they’d have coded for multiple undo if it
was something simple to implement.
The bald fact of the matter is it’s not a simple matter due to legacy
code from over a decade of development. It takes a lot of effort to re-
engineer something with a long pedigree like Freeway, especially if
you don’t have the resources of some of the bigger players in the game.
Multiple undo is always near the top of the list of features that the
engineers want, as well as the users. It will appear at some point
down the road, but for now we just have to put up with the workarounds.