This announcement made me really curious. Until I clicked on the provided links. No offence but are these websites really designed to attract customers?
I think this is still an inheritance of the Real Basic era, an era Xojo wants us to forget. If you are convinced that Xojo is THE premium multi platform development tool, I would make dead sure that all my business partners radiate the same. Quality, Some kind of identity.
I have few doubts that the book will not deliver its promise, moreover I’ll be the first to buy it. But.
This kind of amateur hour look and feel does not add to the impression Xojo wants to attract customers with. Consider a minimum level of quality you want to impress the world with.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. It is often done and in this case it is a shame.
I have “I wish I know how to…; Begin programming in Windows” from Eugene Dakin, and it is a great book.
Very clearly written, easy to read and follow with a very competive pricing. This author surely know what he is talking about. After buying his book, you can easily contact the author and his replies are always very fast.
When you are interested in one of his book, I can only advice you to buy it. You will not regret it.
The Excel & Word books are excellent. They got me from ground zero to where I can figure things out myself now. Eugene is not a business partner with Xojo. He is an independent who is probably just trying to get back a 10% return on his efforts.
I think the book is alright, but you have to admit that a lot of things in the Xojo periphery, especially websites, look outdated. That rejects potential customers. People who want to give Xojo a try and have some doubt about its popularity may be scared off. Unnecessary.
I could understand this few months ago, the old RealSoftware website were really outdated. Their forum software the same.
But user’s contents can’t be summed to those numbers, those belongs to others equations. I believe everybody knows that.
Delphi users have a very visited website called Delphi Haters, I believe Embarcadero don’t like their existence, and I like very much that website, and they exists for years, and there, is where I read the most significant news about that tool. Xojo must maintain theirs websites and let the others websites do their jobs while they operate under the current laws and agreements. Sometimes people ask to webmasters to add some disclaimer line like “This website does not belong to or have any endorsement from TheCompany Inc” or something when there is some possibility of confusion.
It’s more important in my opinion for Xojo to promote the ecosystem at large than discriminate on one’s web design skills. Especially considering they sell a tool that nullifies one’s traditional HTML design prowess.
Thanks for the feedback. Is my website really looking that outdated … hmm… Its seems its time for a facelift. The others on the forum are quite right, I am not an employee of Xojo, and this is merely a hobby. A hobby is defined as something that you cannot make a living - which is VERY true.
One of the reasons why I wrote the book is to help others with coding Xojo for Access (it started off in Real Studio).
Feel free to send me suggestions for my website ( I am always looking for ways to improve the site).
This is probably the only time I’ve used this in proper context “Don’t judge a book by its cover”!
I have Eugene’s book on Excel, it’s excellent and saved me mountains of time. You will not be disappointed.
As for Xojo policing the people offering 3rd party products, I’m not sure how that can be done because many times it is simply a mater of taste. I would much rather have Xojo working on their core product than policing the 3rd party market. To some people, yes the layout etc may reflect poorly. But I can tell you I have bought products from polished websites and book covers and the underlying content was poor.
It seems that the book is good (I have not read it) and the website is outdated by the author’s own admission. The author comes across as a very nice man who is publishing information as a hobby to help anyone who is interested.
I think Alexander has a good point about product and even ecosystem presentation and I believe Xojo Inc. could control and influence this by expanding their 3rd party section. At the moment they have a ‘3rd Party Store’; to get to it you need to go to the Xojo website home, click support and then find and click a single link that is amongst many others, then to see 3rd party products click on one of four icons at the top - in other words, it is quite a journey. Having got to ‘Add-Ons’ you just get a list of things that you can buy through Xojo Inc. Good for a few sales and presumably a percentage for Xojo but it doesn’t present the diverse and large add-on market very well.
So how about if Xojo Inc brought the 3rd party link to prominence on the home page and had a tiered system?
Tier 1 - Things that you can purchase through Xojo Inc.
Tier 2 - A catalogue of things that are available directly from other vendors.
Tier 2 can be all of the 3rd party items comprising a description, some images (screen shots, book covers, etc.) and if the 3rd party vendor has a suitable website then a link to the website, in the case of a book the link could be to Amazon, Safari, etc. Where the website is a bit outdated (and there is no Amazon, Safari, etc.) then an email link to contact the vendor.
Visitors to Xojo’s website would easily see the 3rd party support that is available and see it in a presentation that is controlled by Xojo Inc. They may even get some interesting statistics on what areas and products and services get clicks.
This ‘policing’ is really a marketing department function - it should not detract from core product development. The business benefit to Xojo is more sales (less people being put off by outdated websites etc. and more people being encouraged by the diverse 3rd party support) and more Xojo users means more 3rd party sales.
I think Carl puts it right… and Joseph E has a valid point too. I would not want Xojo to invest their precious time in cleaning 3rd party shopping windows. But I am convinced that still too much of the ecosystem surrounding Xojo is maintained by private people.
I would love to see Devexpress developing some components for Xojo like they have for .Net and VCL. I used their Delphi tools a lot. That would be a major leap in the 3rd party business and a boost for Xojo.
For what it’s worth, www.real3dtutorials.com still attracts three times more visitor traffic than www.xojo3d.com, even though it has the outdated REAL look, and Xojo3D.com has been running for months now.
They have this saying in the gaming world: “Players come for the graphics, but they stay for the game play.”
I suppose the same might hold for Branding vs Content.
I just checked out Devexpress. They’ve got a really nice set of “Office Inspired Controls” in both the VLC Controls and WinForms Controls. Unfortunately they are far above my price range as a hobby programmer and not written for Xojo. I see this as a prime opportunity for more established Xojo programmers to market similar tools; selling the controls as a complete package or individually - something similar to how Monkeybread Software markets their tools.
By the way, I did purchase Eugene Dakin’s “I Wish I Knew How to… Begin Programming with Real Studio in Windows” in spite of the site looking rather dated (no offense). It was his background and programming items listed on his page that prompted me to purchase this book. Hopefully between his “IWIKHT… Begin Programming Real Studio in Windows” book along with Xojo’s new “Introduction to Programming with Xojo” book I can make some headway.