2.0 Status Update

[mikelove]

Well that's true, but it also makes the buttons smaller (hurting usability on small screens), not to mention making the Input Field space shorter and narrower, so I'm not sure if the tradeoff is worth it. In general I prefer to err on the side of usability over aesthetics in cases like this, when people are using your software for 5-10 hours a week (as some do) the former is a lot more important.

 

[frances]

Ah, you make me even more glad to have a VGA screen! I'm not sure why a grey background would make the icons smaller, but I absolutely agree that the design should prioritize usability over beauty. Even on the largest PDA screen a pixel saved is still a pixel earned!

 

[mikelove]

The icons are smaller because they've got that gray border around them; of the 240 pixels of screen width on a standard-res Pocket PC, 144 go to the actual 9 icons (which are 16x16 pixels each) and the remaining 96 are just empty space. So the icons are smaller / less detailed than they could be thanks to all of that space that's filled with gray.

I suppose we could still keep the background color of the icons gray (and maybe even make them that way on Palm too), but since that reduces the contrast and again makes things harder to see I'm not sure if it's such a good idea either.

 

[sfrrr]

Readability at (almost) all costs.

Oh, and reliability too.

Sandra

 

[Shadowdh]

Autumn / winter is not an option, don't worry - not only do we really really need to have at least a beta version out by midsummer in order to take advantage of the people-walking-into-their-BLCU-summer-class-and-showing-off-their-new-dictionary phenomenon (a wonderful marketing tool for us), but I have a long-awaited vacation (my first significant time off since 2005) planned for mid-October and there's no way I'm going off on that with 2.0 still unfinished. "A few months" as I've been saying it lately actually does mean a few months. More urgently, one of our new licenses expires if we don't release a product with it after a year (from the license being signed, which happened in late '06), adding some extra weight to the need to get a beta out soon.

Hi Mike,

as one of the students who are about to head off to their "BLCU not quite summer" class (going for the whole year and to Wuhan not BJ now).. how are we situated for the release now? I am off to China in just under 2 months and wouldnt mind getting Pleco 2 on my ppc by then... how do you like my chances...?

 

[mikelove]

Your chances are very good, actually - we're about 2 weeks away from being feature-complete on Palm and it shouldn't take too many more weeks than that for Pocket PC, so then it's just a matter of cleaning up a couple of nasty bugs and getting the website set up to generate 2.0 keyfiles and we'll be ready to release the first beta. (strange how we always seem to release betas at about the same time of year)

 

[Shadowdh]

With that news even though the rain doth falleth outside its all sunshine in here... thanks mate looking forward to the new pleco... bring it...!!! 8) 8)

 

[sfrrr]

In two or three weeks, I'm going to be sublimely happy. Forget divorce probems, forget illness and temper tantrums, the new PD will cure all.

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

Not quite that fast, sfrrr - feature-complete on Palm does not equal ready to release, it just means we're getting close. But as I said there'll still be bugs to fix... so end of July is unlikely, but for end of August (per Shadowdh's posting) the odds are quite good...

 

[vrixon]

Release date ... tell me I'm safe

My posting to China ends in December （回去澳大利亚）- promise me I will see 2.0 on the office hx4700 before I leave the Middle Kingdom!

 

[mikelove]

We are in fact contractually obligated to have it released before then, so yes, it really should be out well in advance of December.

 

[daniu]

Your chances are very good, actually - we're about 2 weeks away from being feature-complete on Palm and it shouldn't take too many more weeks than that for Pocket PC, so then it's just a matter of cleaning up a couple of nasty bugs and getting the website set up to generate 2.0 keyfiles and we'll be ready to release the first beta. (strange how we always seem to release betas at about the same time of year)

Hi!

Since that 2 weeks are long over now - I gotta confess that I get a bit impatient and visit this page more frequently than usualy.

regards
Daniel

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, we're still not quite feature-complete on Palm, sadly. Very close, but still a few things left to chip away at. This is why I never like to talk about release dates... but as I said before, even feature-complete is still a little ways away from an actual beta release, and we're not currently planning to release a Palm beta until the PPC one is ready too (though that may change), so I wouldn't even bother checking our website frequently until the end of August at least.

 

[mikelove]

I feel like I should probably say something a bit more specific / definitive on this.

I'm heading off for a long trip to Asia in mid-October. My original hope had been that 2.0 would be completely done by then, but while that no longer seems realistic, it is pretty much an absolute, do-whatever-it-takes necessity that a very solid beta release be ready before I go.

So the ideal scenario as it's mapped out in my head is that Beta 1 comes out end of August / early September and then a considerably more stable Beta 2 comes out in early October, just in time for the trip. But the worst-case scenario would still have at least Beta 1 available in early October, so at the very longest you have two-and-a-half months of waiting left.

I hope that clarifies things a bit - I really do hate missing all of these release dates, but it's pretty much impossible to avoid giving them out, so I think for future products we're simply going to be ridiculously ridiculously over-generous with our time estimates; for example, the official release date estimate for the desktop version could be early 2010 or something like that. Better to surprise people with an early release than disappoint them with a late one, it seems.

 

[fredrik]

youtube- flashcards usage

Mike,
thank you for your update. I saw that you made a small presentation of pleco 1.0.3 on youtube. It would be nice to see a video of how to work the new flashcards settings for 2.0 when you release the beta's. I had much headache to make a system for the flashcards in pleco 1.0.3

/ Fredrik

 

[cming]

Youtube user tutorial

I have to second Fredrik's call for another youtube video on how to use the Flashcard system, in fact why not explore all the new features that end up being included in v2.0. This would be a heck of a lot better that screenshots alone.

Would be useful if this video was produced in a Palm, and a PPC version also.

I only discovered Plecodict about 1 week ago, so I'm waiting patiently for v2.0 to come out.

 

[mikelove]

That was actually just something we posted for the benefit of a licensing partner, didn't expect anyone else to actually see it. But yes, we are thinking about putting up a couple of more official videos once 2.0 is out; probably only for the finished version, though, doesn't seem like it's worth the trouble to do one for the beta when the interface is likely to change a bit.

The flashcard settings have already been streamlined a bit, incidentally; we've taken a couple of them out of the session configuration screens and dumped the confusing "Lock On"/"Lock Off" in the Category settings in favor of separate "Require" and "Exclude" screens.

 

[Shadowdh]

In China now and as I thought the pleco is being fired up at least 5 times an hour... cant wait till the new one... an idea I had (alright stole from kingsoft powerword) is having a button appear when you hover over characters to add them to a new word list... which could be reviewed like flashcards at the end of a day or some such... probably a bit late in the day for something like that though...

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Great idea Shadowdh!

I already do this by hand in a small notebook/memo pad that I carry around with me, and I know many other people that do the same thing. The benefits from reviewng the words that one has learned in the last day (or two, or three, or the last week, etc...) cannot be underestimated in how they affect word retention. Especiall for a language with as many characters as Chinese.

Mike, why not incorportate this wonderful idea into Plecodict?

Darrol

 

[gato]

an idea I had (alright stole from kingsoft powerword) is having a button appear when you hover over characters to add them to a new word list... which could be reviewed like flashcards at the end of a day or some such...

This is already implemented in the current version. Just click on the large plus icon, and whatever character or word you are looking up will be added to your current active flashcard list. This works both in the standalone dictionary mode and the instant access mode.