On the Releases

posted by Martin Cohen in Development, Releases | September 29th, 2008 |

Many questions about releases seems to be repeating over and over again. In this post I’d like to explain why releases are so irregular, why you have to wait, why we cannot give estimations and what those unstable and stable releases are.

Why so slow?

Intype is being developed during the nights and mornings because of our daily jobs. This lack and irregularity of the time is taking its price, we all as users are paying. Our reason for need of daily jobs is to have income from different source, so we can keep Intype free of charge during its development process. Many users are comparing Intype’s development cycle to other products being on some regular basis. But we simply cannot compete on this level, therefore we have to find other areas where we can prove to have better product.

Areas where we can be better are for us stability, memory efficiency, consistency and user interface which need a lot of time to be designed, thought through, tested and implemented. But the result is being constantly praised along the users community. That’s what is keeping us going, even if such development is taking too much energy and health price. Actually surgery I’ve underwent four weeks ago is one of those. But don’t worry, I’m much better, because of opportunity to do what I enjoy the most: Intype.

These reasons of course disables us to give estimations, because we can almost never predict what will happen and what effect it will have on overall productivity. Sometimes it’s better idea to solve multiple problems, sometimes it’s boost in daily job, sometimes it’s other stuff. However, we constantly move forward to our primary target: to deliver 1.0 as soon as possible to be possibly able to cut off our daily jobs and spent all our time on working on most advanced features planned up to 1.9.

Releases

Currently, releases are split to two groups: stable and unstable. We decided to use these names due to their standards, but internally these groups refer to how features are completed. Actually the most recent release is much stable, consistent and feature rich than the most recent stable release. Though, some new features are unfinished. We actually are about to switch to new scheme:

  • Stable: Release with finished and consistent features; run through internal and community testing.
  • Cutting-Edge: Releases hot from our kitchen mostly unstable (in terms of actual stability), unfinished features and tested only internally.

Currently there are cutting-edge releases available just for few of our loyal friends, being released sometimes more than on a weekly basis. Those releases are sometimes almost not functional, giving only few areas to be tested (recently Yarden helped us to find bugs in the Hebrew text using the cutting-edge release built only for him)

The new scheme will help us spread the releases in much better way hopefully resulting in effect of more regular releases for early adopters and impatient.

Delopment Notes

However, everything has its “however”. There are times when we take a risk and leave our daily jobs for month or two to be able to boost the development of most hard parts. One of such “times” is currently pending; we both (developers) are currently taking a risk and going on full-steam. There are three team-wide priorities:

  • To provide Ivan and Thomas Bell with relatively stable release to prepare the screencast focusing on working with text, files, and drag & drop features.
  • To finish CP1 in relatively record time. (I’m not telling when; see above)
  • To redesign and rebuild the website.

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  • 1 Soft | 29.09.2008 at 3:18 pm

    Great to hear that progress is being made. Intype is such a wonderful program that it’s worth waiting. Keep up the good work!

  • 2 Johan Bakken | 29.09.2008 at 3:33 pm

    I still use Intype on a daily basis. Keep up the great work!

  • 3 dflock | 29.09.2008 at 5:23 pm

    Hey another great blog post - thanks!

    I have to say this again though - I would be more than happy to pay for the alpha/beta/development version, if it would help you guys.

  • 4 Brendon Kozlowski | 29.09.2008 at 5:32 pm

    Hi Martin. Does the Intype team still plan on using the previously shown template for the new website, or do you have a new plan for that as well? Just curious. :)

    I’m glad your surgery went well! Also, thanks go to yarden for helping with translation issues. (Hi dflock! Ha!)

    Thanks for the blog update!

  • 5 yarden | 30.09.2008 at 12:00 am

    thanks!

    Martin, keep it up!

    Happy new year!

  • 6 Ali B. | 30.09.2008 at 12:14 am

    So When is the release?Hah, just kidding ;)
    Seriously though, I think that the new release scheme is going to be very useful in terms of promoting the product. This will enable early adapters to have their hands on an as-latest-as-possible build, and in this day and age, and considering that Intype would be used, just mainly, by developers, there are plenty of early adopters.
    Keep up the good work.

  • 7 Martin Cohen | 30.09.2008 at 6:56 am

    dflock: There is possibility that we will enable preordering sometime at 0.9, it depends on how fast the development will be after first beta.

    Brendon Kozlowski: We will use a totally different design. There is a lot of not common approaches including my own experiments: 936 grid system and new approach to color mixing that are put to test. I’d like to write a blog post about it, once it is stabilized.

  • 8 Yann Abgrall | 30.09.2008 at 9:19 am

    About the website, I think the design is really neat, why would you change it ?
    Not my call anyway :)
    About the text editor, i’m the latest “unstable release”, I have to say, this is really impressive, I can’t to see Intype grow.
    Keep up the good work (daily job has well!).

  • 9 John Wrana | 30.09.2008 at 9:32 am

    Thanks for all the infos.

    I agree with Yann, I really like the design of the website, please don’t change it to much. ;-)

  • 10 Deadelus | 30.09.2008 at 9:37 am

    Great to hear some news again, can’t wait until a new release. I’m using the latest “unstable” on a daily basis.

    I would be happy to pay for a release any time if it would help :-)

    Keep up the good work!

  • 11 Brendon Kozlowski | 30.09.2008 at 6:21 pm

    To all of you who love the website design: You should, it won recognition (I believe it was Smashing Magazine) awhile back. However, with the content that was planned to be placed on the site, and the growth Intype has found since this website was developed, the current site just wouldn’t handle it properly (without a refresh anyway).

    Since the redesign that was shown awhile back was in a different direction stylistically from the current design, I’d imagine the next iteration will be as well (since Martin’s discussing 936? …I think he meant 960 grid - and other front-end design “toys” - like jQuery probably)… Any way, I doubt we will have to worry too much, these guys are pretty good with UI design too. :)

    Martin: I’d love to see a post about it all if you remember once you release the new site, whenever that happens. :)

  • 12 dijon | 01.10.2008 at 9:49 pm

    very happy to see that you’re still moving forward towards CP1 at good pace (though maybe we don’t get to see it yet!)

    using the current unstable on a daily basis, and have introduced a few friends across to using intype rather than their favourite editors over the last year or so. we won’t be going back.

    good luck & keep up the great work!

  • 13 John | 03.10.2008 at 10:23 pm

    Guys get some funding and spend time getting out the market.

    Have faith in yourselves and the the skills you are pouring in this. I understand keeping a job is important, but its really slowing you down. You guys haven’t gone beyond alpha in a few months.

  • 14 NotCOWARD | 03.10.2008 at 10:42 pm

    Ok, if you are already making money the other way and the releases are *slow*, then why don’t you just make it opensource? Don’t like the idea? I mean look at SublimeText - that guy (ONE PERSON) made HUGE leaps. He is CHARGING FOR THE BETA VERSIONS. That’s how he gets his income. If you guys want to REALLY develop this product and make it as feature rich as E, then you either need to

    1. Give it more time (for God’s sake, get more people if you don’t have enough!). Ask for volunteers, or get some interns.

    2. Or make it opensource! Open it up to the public - thousands of people will help you out. Sure, Notepad++ has some AMAZING features, but this product has something that it does not have: BUNDLES. So if you go opensource, you will get success that way too.

    I hope to get some response from the developers on this issue. I mean the editor is great. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. Get it up and running, or otherwise PEOPLE WILL LEAVE YOU! SLOW UPDATES WILL PROBABLY BE THE REASON WHY THEY WILL LEAVE YOU. Heck, my coworkers have stopped using this product (switched to sublimetext). Eventually, you will get a small amount of loyal users. Not a COMMUNITY.

    I hope I am making myself clear to you. Please keep up the good work! I love this product, but I can’t stand slow releases. Sorry.

  • 15 Martin Cohen | 08.10.2008 at 12:01 pm

    First, thank you for the support. I’ll try to sum up the questions (hope I will not forgot any).

    The website critically needs update at least, because of the manuals for the editor, bundles and JavaScript API. We also want to have layout that will be more flexible to handle new (even not yet planned) features as well. Also the logo and colors have changed few releases ago. Another thing is that we want to unify the system behind so it will not be consisting of many small applications (WordPress, Vanilla), but one simple. Thanks to Ruby on Rails we have already accomplished this, and we are currently working on putting it all together with the design.

    I really meant 936 grid system (really not 960). This one I’ve designed as an experiment and it turned out to be really powerful for my style of designing things. I’m really willing to make a post about the website, when I’m done with my tasks for Intype.

    More time is possible, but it also takes it’s price in being more stressed. Good thing would be to keep stress to push, not pull. From the very first time we started as three person team: 2 developers, 1 webmaster (I hate this word). We were using each persons strongest skills to do the trick, but it seems that after the 2 years the skills are melting. So we have one more person to do programming, one more person to do UI decisions, and one more person to do the community tasks. Of course I was thinking about bringing new people, some discussions actually happened just few days ago, but as the team is getting really strong (in means of skills) I would be really surprised if the new guy would do any good. The person would have to be strong in each part, as we are now, and also would have to follow our planning and decision making. Also there’s no way on hiring someone who we don’t know for long time, and who’s not geographically close. So the amount is going down significantly, and all people we’ve considered were either having their own project, or are actually successful with other projects and they simply do not have time.

    OpenSource was never an option. We are making money because we like the free concept while the product is being in development (possibly having optional pre-orders after beta). We don’t need to rush to deliver badly designed stuff based on early predictions. That was our style at the beginning and we payed our price. We don’t see any point out there why we should change it. Maybe to be more regular, which would mean to plan less stuff per release to optically spread large updates to smaller units. The worst thing is to base big features on quickly predictions and then come to a point when there’s no way of updating anything because of everything else.

    I have also very negative attitude on OpenSource development — it’s visible everywhere. Inconsistency or too much ideas would be a killer for application like this one. It is happening all the time around us. If someone is not satisfied with the project leading, he simply makes a huge plugin, or do a different branch. Of course, it has its pros, such as possibility of using the editing component or interfaces to communicate with Intype from other applications. But we have ideas on how to deal with this our way.

    Also I see no point in comparing us to our competitors, because there’s obviously different motivation, thinking, and style behind each of them. Actually we came through most of their decisions and almost every time we decided to go different way. Yes, you can do comparing based on the amount of features, but all products are on different level of their life-time. I think we all should make comparing when all of the products reach 1.0, because that is the milestone when the competition begins.

    And about the users leaving us: Yes, we can see that far, and we are doing everything to make things done as fast as possible with our style of work.

  • 16 Brendon Kozlowski | 08.10.2008 at 6:10 pm

    Martin, as one of the people who’ve been around for quite awhile (not nearly as long as some), I agree with your decision to not rush things, and to not go open source. I’d imagine you’re already aware of that though.

    I was hoping for CakePHP instead of RoR. Oh well. ;)

    As always, I wish you and the team luck in the next stages of development!

  • 17 Brendon Kozlowski | 08.10.2008 at 6:13 pm

    P.S. - Most open source applications that are still able to make revenue come from support costs, or “donations”. I don’t see the amount of work this team has put in to the multiple engines they’ve created coming back in an equally adjusted value from donations, and who needs support to use a simple (yet extremely powerful) editor?

    Even after the release of Intype’s 1.0 version, I personally wouldn’t expect the team members to give up their daily jobs; but that’s just me.

  • 18 Agate Hao | 09.10.2008 at 3:41 pm

    I like intype! Keep up the good work!
    waiting…………….

  • 19 Ali B. | 10.10.2008 at 2:04 am

    I have to say that I disagree with the generalization of Open source. Open source is not evil. If you look at it, Open source practically rebuild what now we call web 2.0. All the solid platforms are open source, starting from Operating systems and ending with code that runs websites and web application. Open source is not only about putting the code building blocks on top of each other, it’s about building communities, loyal user base and the seek for a side of perfection.
    Having said all of that, I have to say that if I get to throw in an opinion about open sourcing Intype in particular, I would strongly disagree.
    Closed source, in this particular case, has it’s advantages. Firstly, and most obviously, the revenue developers would expect for their hard work. But I am not going to give my opinion about that just because I think it’s their work and their business. The other thing is actually what Martin already, but vaguely, pointed out; the way open source works takes away short term stability and control over the direction of the project. In general this is sometimes good, because you some project member would help pushing the project to a direction the developers haven’t considered. But in particular, and in the case of an editor that is always meant to be fast and, at the very same time, powerful and feature-full, going open source is not really the way to go. If fact, my personal beliefs here is that it would kill this project going open source, opposite of what the most might think.
    Just a quick “message” I wanted to throw in around here to our good developers, Martin, Hvge and Centi: Don’t worry about us ranting about release times, slow development, going opensource..etc! That’s just us being anxious to use the product. And it’s a big sign of how successful this editor is/will be. It’s a natural phenomena. It’s a bar for a great community.
    Sorry If I ever sound not to be in the position to throw in an advice. It’s not an advice, it’s just my 2 cents :)

    Ali B./dmondark
    awhitebox.org

  • 20 Martin Cohen | 10.10.2008 at 10:38 am

    There is a way on how to control the direction, but I’m afraid that it would take even more time than the current closed-source development. Each idea, piece of code, attitude, UI and solution has to be considered and eventually approved. And even if we were open to do it, I don’t think that the contributors will be happy with such leadership. That would possibly lead to make fractions and various distributions, vast amount of tweaks resulting in leaving the original idea.

  • 21 mh | 10.10.2008 at 11:57 am

    It was your idea, it is your project, so leave it closed source and earn your well served money with it. I would do the same.

  • 22 I LOVE INTYPE | 11.10.2008 at 8:56 am

    I am so happy you guys are back to posting updates!

  • 23 im not a coward | 12.10.2008 at 6:19 pm

    hello, is the RSS broken? it seems that Intype 0.3.1.734 is still in the first queue..
    :D

  • 24 Max | 13.10.2008 at 8:58 am

    Thanks for the updates, but please, please learn your “it’s” vs. “its”. This is like driving a car through a bumpy road.

  • 25 Martin Cohen | 14.10.2008 at 2:49 pm

    Max: Hope I fixed all of those. Thank you.

  • 26 Assigned coward | 17.10.2008 at 5:01 pm

    Release an unstable version so we can see what’s changing… and please don’t forget a possibility to do something like an html entities converter and the possibility to create new files and refresh the content in the intype explorer

  • 27 Hindi ako coward | 21.10.2008 at 3:15 pm

    Naman, tagal… super!

  • 28 Brendon Kozlowski | 22.10.2008 at 4:09 pm

    @Assigned coward: “unstable” release 0.3.1.734 (http://intype.info/public/releases/unstable.rss) has the ability to create new files? HTML Entities converter sounds like an add-on that should be easy enough for a community member to create once the application becomes stable. I haven’t used the “Project Manager” so I don’t know if that’s what you mean by “intype explorer” to refresh or not, but it’s currently (as of 0.3.1.734) in a very early test state. I’d imagine that if they’ve caught back up to where they were in the 0.3.1.734 version after all their changes, it’s been updated some more.

    We have to be patient. :)

  • 29 Sam | 22.10.2008 at 8:06 pm

    E just crashed again. Please take my money and start releasing Intype regularly. Seriously…tell me who/where to send my money. I’d like to be your first paying customer and I’d like to start using some of the newer releases.

    Cheers!

  • 30 Cammm | 29.10.2008 at 6:49 am

    Great to hear that InType is still being developed, I was a little worried for a while there.

    Guys, how about a donation link (as mentioned in a previous comment)? Perhaps donations over a certain amount are promised a free / discounted license for the first commercial release. I’m sure there are people who would want to contribute some cash to help encourage the development of InType.

    Otherwise, I’m looking forward to the next “cutting edge” release.

    All the best-

  • 31 DeeLight | 29.10.2008 at 4:15 pm

    I too would donate if it would help accelerate development. I’ve been using InType for integration/development (CSS/JS/(X)HTML/PHP) everyday since May 2008. Currently the ONLY feature I really miss is a notification that a file has been updated and prompt to/auto reload it. Right now, after each SVN Update, I need to close all currently opened files and re-open them, to make sure I don’t overwrite updated files with my currently opened version.

  • 32 Dmitry | 30.10.2008 at 6:35 pm

    Great editor. As a Mac user who has to use a Windows machine at work it’s a relief to be using Intype. Clean, nice syntax highlighting, and hasn’t crashed once. Great job! Keep us posted, and don’t be afraid to accept cash thrown your way :)

  • 33 chris | 04.11.2008 at 2:23 am

    take as much time as you need to get this right.

    I will support it when you do charge for it, I love it so far, and it can only get better!

  • 34 Andy Guilder | 04.11.2008 at 11:25 am

    I recently came across intype and am loving it! There’s no point rushing something :)

  • 35 Adam | 12.11.2008 at 10:08 pm

    Don’t sweat the criticism over the speed of your progress. You wouldn’t be receiving so much of it if you weren’t doing everything else right. The fact that I’ve been using Intype as my primary Windows-based dev editor for the last year and a half speaks volumes about the inferiority of your overbuilt competitors. I will be happy to buy your product when you’re ready to release it.

  • 36 Nikolay Kolev | 01.12.2008 at 5:27 am

    This whole Intype thing turns into a software development version of “Waiting for Godot “… I like it, I use the latest unstable release, which seems pretty stable to me, but the wait kills me!

    Guys, can you just release something? Call it “ultraunstable” or whatever, but show us that there’s something coming up so that we see the light at the of the tunnel. Please!

  • 37 JJ Rami | 01.12.2008 at 6:13 pm

    Yeah, I would really have to agree with Nikolay Kolev…can you give a sign of life? How do you expect to be taken seriously as a business if you don’t even show a sign of life? Once you start charging, people are going to think, “Will they update this thing or just disappear?” Five minutes a week is all it would take to say something, no?

    Cheers!

  • 38 osg | 04.12.2008 at 1:24 pm

    Release it Open-Source and we will continue the project, so all hard coders will be happy, so as u. ey?

  • 39 Anonymous coward | 04.12.2008 at 11:05 pm

    What the hell? Martin, why would you go and write a post such as the one above? You know, I’ve followed this project from the very beginning without uttering many comments. But this threat deserves one. I believe that you have just lost my support as well as many others.

    You and your company are unbelievably unprofessional. And so I will no longer be wasting my time checking for updates to the project. As far as I am concerned, InType /is/ dead.

  • 40 Ivan Čentéš | 05.12.2008 at 1:45 am

    Anonymous: the comment above (gone by now) was not written by Martin. Someone just used his name in the comment form.

  • 41 Jonathan Garay | 08.12.2008 at 9:42 am

    any new from the front ? :P

  • 42 Chunyang | 11.12.2008 at 10:52 am

    Any updates on the progress?

  • 43 To Santa | 12.12.2008 at 12:05 pm

    dear Santa. I wish Intype was released until New Year

  • 44 Anonymous coward | 13.12.2008 at 6:27 am

    good job, a nice editor.

  • 45 Shane | 14.12.2008 at 2:16 pm

    Why don’t all you people lobbing criticism at the developers just leave them to DEVELOP. The more you heckle the more they are going to ignore you, I would. Your like spoiled children.

  • 46 JJ Rami | 16.12.2008 at 2:45 am

    @ Shane

    If they want this to be a successful product and business, I don’t think they should ignore their future customers. Rather, they should listen to them.

  • 47 Professional | 18.12.2008 at 10:03 am

    All i can say is, apply professionalism, and do it as a professional standard.

  • 48 Octavian | 18.12.2008 at 9:37 pm

    Great project! Thank you guys for such a wonderful editor!

  • 49 Sharn | 23.12.2008 at 3:03 pm

    In main page picture it looks like Intype is sinking. I guess it’s true :(

  • 50 Anonymous coward | 18.01.2009 at 8:04 pm

    Seriously? I thought you guys were supposed to turn over a new leaf after the new year. I’m beginning to think that you’re just leading us all along with bullshit promises that will never be kept. You guys are ridiculous. Martin Cohen needs to get on the forums and post a quite lengthy message for all to read, reporting the status of the project and the direction the team will be taking. In fact, Martin needs to release the damn editor and be done with it. Though I’m not sure, at this point, I would invest in this company even if the editor was released. What have we all seen so far? Horrible staff interaction and broken promise upon broken promise? InType team… Turn your shit around!

  • 51 Martin Cohen | 19.01.2009 at 12:26 pm

    I really don’t know what to reply at this point, because, you know we’re all not working full-time, that we have different jobs, and that we always want to deliver the best product. Ok, we perhaps can take a short road by messing the code, by delivering an incomplete product, or just by taking money too soon, but come on, this is what everybody does. If you can’t wait, then it’s ok, don’t wait. Stop by when the new release is available, take a look and try it, that’s the point of our alpha releases. I understand your frustration, but for now, we really can not do it any faster.

  • 52 Anonymous coward | 19.01.2009 at 8:26 pm

    Martin,

    Stop wasting our time. Either you’ve made progress or you haven’t. It’s been a year. Everyone here is tired of all the run-arounds and bullshit. In fact, many have asked you to just compile and release what you currently have. We all know what alpha means, and unless you’ve totally regressed through the years I’m sure the product can’t look any worse than the last release. So stop asking everyone to wait around for you and your lazy team and release something. Enough said.

    (By the way, it wasn’t nearly as hard as you had once thought to post a message, was it? Probably took a whole 10 minutes out of your crazy vaporware lifestyle.)

  • 53 baael | 21.01.2009 at 11:01 am

    we are all waiting, but no one commands you to use Intype or staying here.
    I’ll tell You something.. You’re addicted! Go to doctor!

    :P

  • 54 John Calcote | 22.01.2009 at 1:35 am

    I for one am happy with the progress being made on InType. Like the rest of you, I can’t wait for the 0.3.5 release, but I’m okay if it takes a while. I run several open source projects, and I fully understand how much time it takes away from home and work life. Some of my projects haven’t seen my face for a few months.

    Given that InType is not even open source, I’d expect development to be even slower, as Martin and Juraj can’t expect any help from outside sources.

    One comment however: It would be nice to have a feature overview help file in the Help menu. I understand you don’t want to commit to writing help text just yet, but for those of us unfamiliar with TextMate, such an overview help file would be a nice “getting started” sort of place.

    Thanks for the great product. When it’s finally for sale, I can guarantee you at least one purchase. :)

    –john

 

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What is Intype?

Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response.

It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy.

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Intype is still in development, but the current alpha release is available for download here.

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