Sure as a small company, just my wife and I. Paying for advertising is not cost effective as we don’t have enough to spend on a successful marketing campaign. In the past we’ve spent 1000s of dollars at a time via Google Adwords and other advertising partners to see a minor increase in sales (but not enough).
So we’re always on the lookout for a means of promotion and gaining awareness of our products that generate sales without costing too much money.
Take social media for instance, we all use it, but I have no idea how to use it to promote our apps, so far everything I’ve tried doesn’t appear to do anything.
Not necessarily ads, but if they are reasonable in price and targeted them I’m interested.
Like @Michel Bujardet points out, most targeted ads are expensive and therefore not cost efficient for a small company, Sure if I could throw 20~30 grand at advertising it might have an effect in the long run, but we simply don’t have that cash.[quote=309858:@Eugene Dakin]Thanks, and I am looking forward to your thoughts![/quote]
Oh and another idea!
3D x-plat graphics, covering how to use OpenGL for Windows and Linux, and also how to use Metal on the macOS and iOS.
Nope - WE all dont
I avoid it - almost enough to say “at all costs”
Mostly because I hate their terms of service (always have)
All of the “social media” platforms are just different advertising pipelines
When the service is free you know they’re selling YOU as the product to someone - advertisers
I’ve not seen one of these have a different monetization strategy for their hordes of users
I’d almost pay a fee for a service that said “No ads. Ever”
[quote=309977:@Norman Palardy]Nope - WE all dont
I avoid it - almost enough to say “at all costs”
[/quote]
WOW!!! I’m floored… something that Norman and I are 100% in agreement about!!!
@Christian: Xojo has “Introduction into Programming”. The job description for your trainee looked like a full time job and not a trainee, by the way.
Regarding the marketing: there is ton of stuff around by “gurus”. Of a very very varying quality. If you get strategy it’s usually rather vague. If you get tactics it totally contradictory. One guru says “Facebook advertising is great”, the next one says “don’t do Facebook advertising”. Does anyone here do email marketing? Customer segmentation? Any advertising (besides XDeveloper)? Customer surveys?
The latest OpenGL book covers Windows and Mac OSX and doesn’t cover Linux. I can look at expanding this to Linux and my only question is which Linux distribution to support? I know there have been many different types that are used with Xojo, and is there one that is supported by Xojo?
The trouble is that Apple have pretty much almost abandoned OpenGL in favor of their Metal API. OpenGL on Apple’s platforms is already behind other platforms, while this doesn’t directly affect me, I’ve seen enough developers peeved about it and frustrated that they now need to covert their code over to Metal to keep feature parity with other platforms. I don’t know what would be involved for that.
Heck the NSOpenGLView has a bunch of issues on Yosemite and forwards when enabling “Layer-backed views”, some have taken me a long time to figure out how to solve, some I have dirty workarounds for.
So going forwards for the Mac, Metal is the way. My current application uses OpenGL, because of all the time I’ve put in to get it work. Probably later on this year, I’ll be looking to migrate to Metal.
As for supporting Linux, I can’t help you there mate.
[quote=309861:@Sam Rowlands]c) The fastest way of sharing data between functions and classes.
d) The fastest way of loading and writing complex data structures.[/quote]
those two plus who to write plugins.
c & d for new(er) Xojo programmers and for the seasoned ones that need additional tweaking to their skill sets.
plugins as some of us get to the more advanced side of the language, we need to write a plugin for additional functionality that Xojo and the current 3rd party plugins dont offer. It could start off with hey there is a 3rd party .dll/.so/.dylib that I want to wrap in a xojo plugin to use. to a more full featured from ground zero and up how to write one from scratch. Maybe its two different books (one for wrapping the .dll/.so/dylib and one for ground up approach). I would but it/both of them today (pre-order). I know I am weak on this area.
I think a good book for beginners to learn how to do things right will help a lot.
Beside the official documentation, there can always be more specific ones.
[quote=310062:@Michel Bujardet]At an indeterminate time but announced at XDC, plugins format will change.
DLL have been covered several times over this forum, as well as in the blog.[/quote]
using soft declares have been discussed but how to take a dll and covert it to a plugin has not.
I would LOVE to start using the new plugin format but it is coming out when its ready™ which will be in 201[789]. And you will have to use that version of Xojo. Not all of the users have a current license. I do. Some dont. (and I wouldnt want to guess percentages).
And if I am the minority of that wants this info, and @Eugene Dakin wants to write on something else. That is cool. I was just voicing my opinion.
I would like a book about software design, software testing, design patterns, debugging, refactoring. It is hard to learn this stuff from books that only use Java or C language for examples.
A database book that covered some of the xojo add-ons like Bob’s active record, Phillis SQLdeLite, and CubeSQL would be helpful as a reference. Something that dealt with them in a deep way. Covering how one might tackle different problems. Compare and contrast the solutions for various problems. If that’s not meaty enough maybe include the Xojo classes and some advanced SQL methods.
@scott boss and @Michel Bujardet both have great points about plugins. I’m not exactly sure what to think on this topic because the new format will be coming out, just not sure when. I believe that the ability to use Xojo plugins are going to stay around for quite some time. I’ll add these topics to the list and see the response from the survey.
This is a good point Joseph, and I always have a tough time with this one. At this time I feel that the documentation would be best covered by each of their creators.
Here is the compiled list of the topics from the above comments (I hope I haven’t missed any)
Game/animation programming
Introduction to Database Business Applications
Threads
OpenOffice/Libre Office
PowerPoint Windows OS
InnoSetup Windows OS
Databases for Web (MySQL)
Listbox Control
RegEx
Socket programming
MemoryBlock
Xojo Script
Irrlicht Game Engine
Creating Beautiful GUI Design
Component Object Model (COM)
Sub Classing
Recipe Book
Xojo Beginner Introduction (new to programming and Xojo, debugger section)
Converting to Xojo (new to Xojo an existing programmer, debugger section)
Marketing your program (sales, pricing, ads, etc)
Game design, concepts, and gameplay
Creating a Beautiful GUI Design
How to design a program (strategy and content, wireframing and prototyping, execution and analytics)
Extend OpenGL to a Linux OS (Ubuntu?)
Metal Graphics (Mac OSX and/or iOS)
Optimization (multi-core, graphics, fast function and classes, complex data structures)
Animation programming (advanced?)
Plugins (how to wrap/convert a .dll/.so.dylib) (plugin format changing in newer version)
Writing a plugin from the ground up (plugin format changing in newer version)
Program with newer Xojo plugin format (when is the release date?)
Some topics might be combined when assembling a book. When the survey starts, you can (and should) choose more than one topic.
Although there is quite some time before the next XDC in 2018, I am planning on attending the event in Denver. I am looking forward to learn more about fellow programmers from this forum - it sounds fun!
If you embark on such a project, you should talk to Geoff and the team. I’m sure they’d be happy for you to be included in the process. Especially if having a book out at the same time as when the new system goes live, will improve the adoption rate.
[quote=310229:@Eugene Dakin]Extend OpenGL to a Linux OS (Ubuntu?)
Metal Graphics (Mac OSX and/or iOS)[/quote]
If you decide to do this, you should link up with @Michael Diehr as it seems he might be embarking on a new quest to replace OpenGL with Metal on the Mac and Vulkan on Windows. https://forum.xojo.com/38046-3d-graphics-opengl-metal-vulkan-direct3d
Plugins written in Xojo and plugins written in C/C++ may have some points where they overlap but they’ll both continue to exist
You should not expect anything else
I understand, but as you know programmers don’t always make the best technical writers. Case in point (and one I failed to mention) is Valentina. I got it once as part of a bundle and even joined their listserv. I persevered for awhile but eventually gave up. At some point it just doesn’t seem like a good use of time to keep slogging through it.
At any rate, a thorough treatment of all the database options would be very useful as a reference. And I’d include Valentina in the mix. Keep it in mind if you ever run out of topics.
This is a good idea and I hadn’t though about it. Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Joseph. I still make my fair share of mistakes Your right about having added documentation to help understand some of the content a little easier. I will definitely consider writing 3rd party technical books at some-time in the future.
[quote=310347:@Norman Palardy]Plugins written in Xojo and plugins written in C/C++ may have some points where they overlap but they’ll both continue to exist
You should not expect anything else[/quote]
This is great to hear. Thanks Norman!
