I am looking for 3 volunteers to be Beta Testers for an application I have.
You must meet certain requirements.
You must be familar with Microsoft Visio and have used it extensively in the past
You must be willing to commit a reasonable amount of time to this effort
You must be able to clearly and consisely describe defect situations and provide written feedback
You must have full time access to a MAC computer using OSX 10.7 or greater
In addition to defects, you must also be willing to comment and contribute ideas for cosmetic and feature changes
You must have been in the IT industry professionally for a minimum of 5 years
Compensation will consist solely of a lifetime license to the final product for installation on a single computer, and the knowledge of a job well done.
Snapdragon is a OSX oriented diagramming tool (similar to Visio from Microsoft)… But there are features that hopefully Snapdragon has that Visio does not, and it is known that Visio has features that Snapdragon does not (many were omitted on purpose in order to focus on useabiltly and keep the over all complexity down). However, new features will be added to Snapdragon if they are shown to significantly increase the usablity of the product.
If you are interested, or have more questions… please contact me
I offer that you might want to rethink the “for installation on a single computer” part of your license. Personally, I won’t even try software that has that restriction because I know that I am going to want it on all three of my machines, and, after all, it is I and not my computer that uses the software. “For use on a single machine at any given time” is a more reasonable restriction.
I have thought about it… and there is no way to control piracy with that kind of license unless I wanted to go to the trouble of a server that kept track of who was doing what… and Big Brother I am not.
I am not going to be selling this for $300 like Visio sells for… and THAT is for a single computer license.
That being said… I am a reasonable person, and am willing to work with paying customers in that regard once the product gets to market.
Not going to get into a “can’t control piracy, so why bother debate.”
As for Windows… quite possibly once the OSX version is firmed up.
I have already tested the existing code in Win7, and there is huge amounts of flickering, and I have to modify how the stencils are accessed… so I won’t concentrate on those issues until it is feature complete.
kinda of but not exactly. Currently it supports a single background page and multiple foreground pages… I may enhance this to what Visio does (multiple background pages, where each can be attached to one or more foreground pages)
But layers as such… not at this time… and while I know Visio has them… I’ve never bothered using them… I have not seen a “need”… but it is something I will look in to
EDIT :
Just read up on Visio layers
And one of the next releases of SnapDragon will support a layer concept. the ability to assign any shape to a numbered layer, and turn those on/off for print/display purposes.
After reading more about layers I can see situations where it can be very useful… and I have begun implementing that feature (lucklily my design paradigm allows this to be added easily)
Since Visio is a diagramming tool… how do you use it with “realtime” data? (bearing in mind that Excel is also not a “standard” tool for OSX users)
Since Visio is only Windows I use Gliffy on the Mac when working at home (http://www.gliffy.com)
for small projects. Since it runs in the browser I can access it from anywhere on any platform.
While I don’t meet the criteria for testing, can I make a few suggestions based upon that screenshot?
#1 Use a more Mac like toolbar, while people coming from Windows won’t care, some hardened Mac users will. I’ve even heard of Apple rejecting apps if they look too Windows like (yet they allow my competition to sell windows looking apps!).
#2 Move the tabs to the top, or even to the side under the object selector.
#3 I presume the slider on the right hand side is for adjusting the zoom, I would suggest making this much smaller and a popup menu.
While none of these things are show stoppers, they can help make it more consistent with Apple’s HIG, which if anything should earn you brownie points with Apple’s reviewers and hopefully get you a chance to be promoted by Apple.
It looks very Apple like to me, don’t you see the three pretty coloured dots top left of the screen. Caveat, I’m not an Apple user but I guess I really didn’t need to state the obvious.
Not very Mac like app, I’d say.
Too many icons in the toolbar and not the best ones
Also, why toolbar separator? Apple banned these, so you should fake them.
There are also many design issues IMHO.
Ok… forget it guys… geeze… talk about non-professionall feedback… this is unfreaking believable.
I get it… and have already changed the toolbar. If you are not interested in this app, thats fine…
And I have been a developer for 35 years on many platforms, and I don’t get this religious zeal for the HIG. an app needs to meet a form and function specific to the operation and requirements of the app. not some abitratray cosmetic guidelines so that it looks more pretty than functional. Heck, even Apple themselves does not follow their own rules as evidenced by some of their own products…
So if you are going to be rude and provide un-helpful feedback… I’ll just close this thread and move on.
I’m not worried about making money off this. I already know I will as I have companies that have already seen it and expressed an interest, so I must be doing something right.
Dave, don’t take it so personally. You asked for feedback and someone tried to help. Was not my intention to be rude, really.
Anyway, don’t make questions if you are not ready to hear the answers
Dave, my advice is to not take the feedback that has been given to wrong way. You should look at the positives from that feedback and use it to make your app better. I don’t think others whom provided feedback about your very interesting app meant to hurt you in any way personally or professionally. From what I can tell the users provided the feedback about the interface elements only because they wanted you to understand some of the extra hurdles you will experience when producing apps for the Mac market. Users and possible Mac customers for your App expect Apps that follow a common Mac standard when It comes Interface design in a Cocoa or Carbon based apps. For Mac Apps, Form and function go hand and hand. I also think the users who provided that feedback could have been a little more clear so that the comments didn’t come of so harsh. Again it looks like you have a very interesting app on you hands an I look forward to taking a look at the finnish product.
Sam Rowlands was the only one who (in my opinion) was constructive, and I took his menu comment to heart and as mentioned above, replaced my homegrown toolbar with an “acceptable” Native looking one… even though that meant LOSING things that my menu could do (+/- captions, 32 vs 16px icons).