ianmjones

Just released a minor update to CaseDetective for FogBugz.

There were a handful of tiny things that irked me about 1.0.

The automatic check for update popped up a dialog asking the user to connect to the internet if it couldn’t connect to the internet straight away. I feel the automatic check should just ignore the error and pretend there wasn’t anything to download. The manual check for update will however ask the user to connect to the internet if it can’t get through.

The Database and FogBugz specific areas of the Connection tab in Preferences weren’t well defined, now they’re in nice little group boxes. Makes it very clear what’s what.

There’s a limit of 64 columns in the listbox I use for displaying the cases, and as I have one column hidden to store meta data that means users can pick up to 63 columns to view/extract at once. This isn’t likely to be a problem, can’t see many people wanting to extract all 77 columns currently available, but strange things happen if you try. So I’ve made it impossible to select more than 63 columns for display, with a nice little message if the user tries.

The docs had a few spelling mistakes and I wanted to update the list of fields in the features page to have dinky little and pictures for when a field is sortable or not. I’ve also added an acknowledgments page and updated some of the wording in a few places.

This release was a lot easier and faster to put together than 1.0, I’ve got a nice little suit of tools that had to be put together and learnt during the run up to 1.0, now I know the sequence. Hopefully it’ll get easier and easier as I refine my workflow.

It’ll be a good test of the auto check for update too, hopefully those CaseDetective users that have switched it on will get a little dialog pop up when they first run it tomorrow. Then again, most of my users will no doubt be taking the day off tomorrow seeing as it’s a holiday in the States.

Woohoo, I’ve got my first sale of CaseDetective!

What a great feeling, with just 3 and a half weeks to go until I give up my current means of income this sale couldn’t have come at a better time, it’s a real confidence boost.

“So, what’s the deal with CaseDetective anyway?” I hear you ask, “It’s been a bit quiet on the old release front hasn’t it?”.

Well, life has really got in the way recently, it’s been proof that I need to do this thing full time if I’m going to do it properly. But there is a release waiting in the wings.

CaseDetective 1.0 has got a number of fixes and optimizations under the hood, but only a couple of changes visible to the user, such as a few new fields. I haven’t been able to get the LDAP stuff working as reliably as I’d like, so I’m pulling that from the release, no one has asked for it, so it can wait until the next release, I’ll have much more time to get it right for then.

There’s a new website and forums waiting to take the stage too. The website is cleaner still than my current website, and I’m also making CaseDetective.com different (in colour) to imijsoft.com so that I can eventually bring new brands to the fore without worrying about watering down my existing brand(s).

My current client asks me every other day whether I’ve reconsidered leaving them, which makes me feel very guilty for leaving them in the lurch, but I’m totally resigned (ha ha) to moving on to developing CaseDetective full time. I’m going to miss the guys I work with I’m sure, but it’s now or never.

So, all in all, things are going great, seriously looking forward to going solo and over the moon that someone’s found CaseDetective useful enough to buy. Happy days! 🙂

Oh yeah, I admit it, I did the first sale jig around the living room when I got the confirmation email!

Hey, just noticed that CaseDetective’s application icon as designed by Jordan Langille of BuyIcons.com is the current “Featured Design”. Cool!

Ben over at BRK Studio has started a blog about his progress in developing an integrated solution for license management, purchasing and support contracts to be self hosted by ISVs.

Quite an ambitious project which a lot of Micro ISVs will be interested in, one to watch me thinks.

I’m a little late to the party, but I’d just like to congratulate Ian Landsman on releasing HelpSpot 1.0.

The product looks superb, great design and very well thought out feature set, as you’d expect from someone with deep knowledge of the Help Desk domain.

Well done Ian, the boy done good!

Jeff Marder has passed on some very nice words of advice he got from Greg Gartner some time ago.

I’m feeling very humbled that his post was written in my honour.

Thank you Jeff.

Phil Wright has also just handed in his notice to develop components full time, and not only that he’s off to Australia too.

Good luck Phil, hope it all goes well.