love the functionality of your app,
but it desperately need a UX overhaul....
please hire a pro.. maybe make a contest for the best mock up and have us vote!
: )
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Gavin JG Lawrie I would value a clarification from Oranged concerning the how best to interpret the phrase "upcoming Cocoa update". My copy of the Oxford English Dictionary defines "upcoming" as "adjective about to happen ; forthcoming". Is the Cocoa update really "about to happen"?
I suspect not. Why? Well the same phrase has appeared in these postings before. In December 2011, someone from Oranged added this post:
"In the near future we will be transitioning Studiometry to a Cocoa application, which means spell-checking on Macs. Dashboards are slated for an upcoming release as well, replacing the generic "select a project" screen that fills in now."
Yes. In the same announcement we had "in the near future" and "upcoming" (which means "about to happen"). But since we are now in May 2013 (err… that would be 18 months later…) and nothing has been seen of the Cocoa release, we must conclude that for Oranged these terms must have quite different meaning.
I'm tempted to suggest to the Oranged support team that they either put up an improved UI might break cover or fess up to spinning deceptive tales back in 2011… but based on the various comments posted to this now 2+ year old thread the likelihood of any such useful communication arriving on this thread or anywhere else seems vanishingly small.
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Oranged Support @ Gavin: As you may know we use Real Studio to create Studiometry, and we have been waiting for their Cocoa building features to come out of beta for some time now. We are simply trying to be as transparent as possible about the fact that we're working on it, but we cannot currently release it due to the program used to create Studiometry. There are many huge benefits to having software built in Real Studio, with the main one being the cross-platform compiling that most of our competitors don't have. One of the disadvantages is that we have to wait for an ability to be in Real Studio before we can release it in Studiometry, and for a while now Cocoa has been in development/beta stages, which is why we haven't released a Studiometry version with this included.
Real Studio has announced that they will bring Cocoa building out of Beta with an "upcoming" version on June 4th, so we hope to be able to work with the final version to complete the transition and release an update shortly after. Obviously a Cocoa version of Studiometry won't be released on June 4th, but at that date if their non-beta Cocoa building process is out of beta we can expect something reasonably soon after that.
The actual release date of the non-beta Cocoa version was just announced last week, so we really had no way of knowing until then. We were going by what we heard from RS, and they have delayed the non-beta version several times.
@ Michael: We were simply responding to the users who have said that Studiometry looks dated compared to some other products and that it could use a refresh. There are many posts in this thread and we were responding to a newer one and not one of yours necessarily. We obviously always want to make the program quicker/easier to use and have made many advancements to that throughout the years, we just don't always post them to this thread. If you check out the version history on our site you can see there are many behavior/efficiency related updates that have been made to Studiometry, but we do understand that there are some aspects of the program that can be more efficient. We have been improving this area in relatively small steps, as we don't want to break or interrupt the workflow of our users who are running their business every day with Studiometry.
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RobbiNewmanLight&Vision Bingo...thats a great response..tnx for the info...as i said I am happy to wait for a cocoa version. Please place it in beta when you do so we can test.
To be frank there are so many issues for me with merging Studio and OSX that is why I have not bothered to upgrade. I am happy to submit a huge list if you want but its about the calendar, the address book intergration and feel for just a start. The choice and use of the toolbar and the myriad of windows and lists thast seem all over the place for another...also printing issues and as well and the awkward form builders etc....all so old fashioned PC style.
I must admit I also just like working with something that looks and feels hi tech...like the latest UI in Photoshop, Aperture etc and of course the almost redundant Contactizer....and so it goes on.
Cant wait anyhow as you seem to have the market to yourself...:)
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Gavin JG Lawrie @Oranged: thanks for the additional information. Very disappointing. I'm afraid we had been pinning our hopes on your vague statements about Cocoa implying that you were rewriting Studiometry as a proper OS X app - such a major effort might have explained the extended time-delay between announcements, and the apparent lack of progress on developing / fixing the current app. Foolish optimism on our part. But at least we now know that the various vague announcements were largely smoke and mirrors on your part, and that the new Cocoa version is actually dependent upon someone else enabling a new feature in the IDE. I'm guessing that as a result Studiometry itself will remain largely the same. So same cross platform "lowest common denominator feature set" in the UI. Will be interesting to see what, if anything, changes with the new version - maybe some of the odder behaviours will be cleared out. But we won't be holding our breath.
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Oranged Support @Gavin: First off, Studiometry is already a native and "proper" OS X app. Currently it is built using Carbon, and we are transitioning to Cocoa. If you'd like to read more about this you can check out the Wikipedia articles for Cocoa and Carbon. Switching from Carbon to Cocoa within RB is not a matter of simply clicking "Cocoa" and rebuilding the app. We've have to redesign/rewrite many of the custom controls and areas of Studiometry to work properly with Cocoa due to differences in drawing & behavior between Cocoa and Carbon. This is the work that we have been doing in regards to that over the past year and a half or so. Once the functionality comes out of beta and our work is done, we will release the Cocoa version of Studiometry.
We are also working on a separate redesign of much of the application as the main focus of Studiometry 11. This is also in development and has been for quite some time.
@Robbi: Thanks for the feedback! We will have a beta version for the Cocoa Studiometry as well as Studiometry 11 open before it is released. We will send out notifications when the beta is open.
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Gavin JG Lawrie @Oranged… First, I'm pleased that for whatever reason you've decided to start communicating with the people participating in this thread for so long. Second, I'm delighted to hear that you are working on a rebuild of the app. I just hope that you might take a leaf out of your current recent experience and communicate the status / progress / eta of V11 to others as you go. I am hesitant to ask when you might think to be delivering V11 - for fear of getting the mightily useful "upcoming" response, but it would be nice to have some idea about timescales.
As for the 'proper app' jibe - I'll remember that next time I have to manually nudge the app over the bug that prevents it starting as a "start at logon" app, or grimace at the quite awkward UI (which after all is the purpose of the thread) or struggle to 'find' lost Summary Report windows or squint at the totally perplexing UX minefield that is the 'permissions' settings and absolutely think this is class leading stuff compared to other 'proper' apps on my computer. Pixelmator - eat your heart out. Aperture - clearly got lessons to learn. Mail - amateur hour or what! This thread is about suggestions for how you might improve the UI / UX of Studiometry. Rewriting custom controls may be necessary, but really is not going to fix it. You really need to look at the UX and create an interface that actually helps you do things - maybe that's what you are doing with V11. I sincerely hope so.
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Admin Hello @Oranged
I am still fairly new to studiometry but I can see the complexity but also where things seem a bit clunky.
I am pleased to hear that some redesign is being worked on - and that there will be a beta version. However, before doing lots of development, have you thought about writing up some details of what you plan BEFORE you start, to get people's feedback on that, i.e. getting customers' feedback between design and development?
That way any modifications can be amended at design stage prior to development and beta.
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Oranged Support Studiometry 11 is just around the corner now with a completely redone main window UI and client/project views. If anyone on this thread is interested in testing it out, we will be opening up beta signups for it within the next week or so.
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RobbiNewmanLight&Vision thats me for sure...will this be the Cocoa version?
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Oranged Support Yes. Studiometry 11 is in Cocoa.
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RobbiNewmanLight&Vision cant wait to see..and use :)..and purchase ha ha
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Oranged Support Studiometry 11 is out now with a brand new UI, client and project overviews, and many other additions. To see what's new, please visit:
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