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RE: TopStyle plans and future

Stanley_Krute — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:36:26 GMT

Thanks Greg and Nick. This is very welcome news.

I'm another longtime fan of Nick's products who still relies daily on TopStyle.

One thought: while you're searching for a developer, if you find someone great who doesn't have a lot of Delphi experience, keep your minds open. An Algol-like language is an Algol-like language, and a great developer can quickly swim in any pond. Organization, imagination, user empathy, careful bug-resistant no-cheap-tricks coding, deadlining, and shipping are the keys to any non-trivial software project. I imagine whoever you find, no matter what their level of Delphi experience, will spend the first few months working in an apprentice/journeyperson relationship with Nick.

Looking forward to the day I can send $$$ in for an update to 4.0 ....

RE: TopStyle plans and future

LadynRed — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:08:02 GMT

I'll second that wahoo !! :w00t:

I use Topstyle every single day, it's almost always open ALL day too. My colleague and I were discussing TS just the other day (I converted her to a TS enthusiast), hoping that TS would not wither and die.

I"m SO glad to hear we're going to have forward movement. I've tested many other alternatives and NONE of them even come close to TS overall .. at least no for me. Some had some nice features, and I've seen most of them in the wish list to add to TS here.

I was resolute to use TS until I could no longer do so.. now maybe I won't have to give it up for a long, long time. :w00t:

Thanks Nick and NG !!!

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Jack Brewster — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:42:12 GMT

I'd like to add my own "wahoo".

@Alan/David - in his post, Nick stated clearly that he'd be working on the existing bug list for the next build, not just addressing the Vista issues, so I think you can rest easy there.

And from a former insider's perspective, I can tell you that all the bugs and features that are submitted here in the forums or via email to support are entered in the bug tracking system, so they're all still accounted for, even if the forum that they came in is no longer available.

Any response from NG that includes a tracking number, i.e., 12345, is in the system. It should be noted though that, being in the system is no guarantee that a particular feature or bug will be addressed. That's where prioritizing comes into play (as with anything).

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Kurt — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:29:09 GMT

As Alan says: "I'm not suggesting new features; those can wait for 4.0. Simply a bug-fix, plus (if possible) updates to the style checker and updated style definitions to reflect changes in CSS and browser support" But of course VISTA-ready (without hacks and glitches) - a lot of people (me too) already moved on to vista in the meantime ...

RE: TopStyle plans and future

David Sims — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:49:57 GMT

Let me add my voice as [i]cautiously[/i] optimistic--I still use TS almost daily...it's been a great piece of software, but alas I also was less than enamored of the "wall of silence" concerning future development (or not) of TS...so, this is good news that I hope will [i]continue[/i] to be good news.

Like Alan said, I hope the next point release won't just be Vista-specific--I also have no Vista plans. And as Louise alluded to, there are all those many requests made back before NG came along...are those still "on the table" for the 4 release, or do we start from square one again? Please let us know, so we are able to get a grasp on your projected scope of development--and so we can be involved (or not) in a way that will best support you in bringing a new version to fruition.

A projected timeline would also be great--are we looking at a 2010 release of ver. 4, or maybe late 2007? According to my records, it's now been 5 years since ver. 3 was released, and about a year and a half since 3.12. I know many of us feel the elapsed time keenly, and would be encouraged by some real steady work on TS.

Thanks again for a great program.
David

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Alan Palmer — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:24:03 GMT

I do hope that the point upgrade to come isn't just a fix to enable TS to run properly on Vista. From a purely personal view, I don't intend switching to Vista for some time yet, assuming my computer doesn't die on me, that is. Over the long hiatus since 3.12 several bugs have been logged in the forum, and I trust a determined effort will be made to fix those, as well. I'm not suggesting new features; those can wait for 4.0. Simply a bug-fix, plus (if possible) updates to the style checker and updated style definitions to reflect changes in CSS and browser support.

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Daf — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:21:02 GMT

I'm also glad to see some rhetoric posted, but only because I was starving for it. I'm not convinced it has any nutritional value ... IOW I'm not drinking the Kool-aid just yet. :P

I suspect that the new Windows version prompted the long overdue attention, I will be interested to see if it extends beyond that. I hope so... there are a [b]LOT[/b] of features/fixes that have been waiting. It would be infuriating if this next version was just a Windows Hot Fix and we fell into another long waiting game.

But good see Nick posting on TS again, regardless.

Daf

RE: TopStyle plans and future

charlesroper — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:09:24 GMT

This is good news indeed. Not only because TS4 looks to be on the way, but through the acknowledgement that the wall-of-silence treatment has done more harm than good. I'm really glad things are moving and more open again. My sincere apologies if any of my previous remarks came across as personal attacks; that was not my intent. I was just venting frustration as I'm sure many of the others posting on that thread were too. Kudos to NG for not moderating it.

Looking forward, do you have a list of known features that are going into TS4? If Firebug-style X-Ray feature were implemented, and Textmate/E-Texteditor style snippets and commands (ideally with compatibility with the Textmate/E-Texteditor bundles and themes), I'd certainly be first in line for the new version.

:)

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Louise — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:05:19 GMT

Hi Nick,

How welcome is this news.

I do hope the old TS Community, including those who followed you from HS days, re-establishes to support this outstanding product, if only for our, the Users', commercial advantage. I suspect that many continue to lurk on an occasional basis.

Once the Vista fix is out of the way, we here, certainly, offer any testing support we can once you reach the alpha stage. (I suppose you will follow your previous practice of alpha, beta and release boards.)

I notice some matters of detail being raised again.

Before the hiatus in program develoment, there had been a host of things that you had registered for possible future consideration, some of which were structural.

I know it has not been your practise to foreshadow changes, but due to the elapsed time, might it not be valuable to set out on what future directions and general areas you think you might concentrate.

I would guess it less than useful to re-submit old requests at this time.

best
Louise

RE: TopStyle plans and future

mother — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:33:43 GMT

I'd really love at least some basic unicode support. I produce page in several languages and it's almost impossible to do it without at least UTF-8.

(And it's almost impossible to do it without TopStyle; it's a dilemma).

RE: TopStyle plans and future

zurdog — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:02:06 GMT

In terms of new features... I like this feature in web expression....

Also in the CS Selector panel, being able to have a search box so as I type, it will filter out the contents of the IDs, Classes etc.

That's all for now, I'm sure I'll come up with more.

RE: TopStyle plans and future

zurdog — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:33:15 GMT

[quote]I have always developed with the involvement of customers, and that won't change. However, I can't guarantee that I'll use a voting system - I stopped doing that a while ago since it was such as PITA trying to stop people from gaming the results.[/quote]

So I guess I'm to assume that you'll be working on TopStyle 4? As indicated earlier it seemed like someone else was going to be found for that position. Regardless... I'm happy you're back to TopStyle!!!!

I think for this next minor release (aside from Vista support), simply having updated style definitions for all of the browsers.

For 4.0, some kind of 'plugin' system so other people can add to the functionality.

Anyways.... glad to hear things are moving forward!

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Nick Bradbury — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:05:00 GMT

[quote][b]zurdog (6/11/2007)[/b][hr]What kind of involvement will the community have in TopStyle 4... regarding features, improvements etc?[/quote]

I have always developed with the involvement of customers, and that won't change. However, I can't guarantee that I'll use a voting system - I stopped doing that a while ago since it was such as PITA trying to stop people from gaming the results.

[quote]Will the next version of TopStyle support XML/XSS etc?[/quote]

Honestly, I doubt it. I think one of the biggest mistakes developers make is adding too much to their applications, so I'm not planning to stray away from the "core" web authoring technologies (that is, CSS and xHTML). But there are plenty of things I could add to TopStyle which make it far better for web authoring - and I'd love to hear from you what you'd like to see.

Best,

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Nick Bradbury — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:59:47 GMT

Hi folks,

As you can imagine, I'm really glad that we're finally breaking our wall of silence about TopStyle :) I really do want to aplogize for the lack of communication about TopStyle - I know I could've handled it better, and I hate that I've lost the trust of some long-time customers. As I've stated before, I continue to rely on TopStyle every day, so I'm personally committed to keeping it alive.

I know from the outside it appeared that we've been ignoring TopStyle, so I want to let everyone know that starting this week I'll be working on TopStyle again (yay!). My first priority is to take care of any Vista-related issues, since we've heard from a number of TopStyle customers who have encountered problems after making the switch to Vista. We want to have a new release with Vista support very soon, but I'm going to whittle away at the accumulated buglist before then to make sure that the next build isn't simply a "Vista compatibility upgrade."

Thanks,

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Alan Palmer — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:57:38 GMT

Thanks for the update, Greg. I'm am sure, though, that you will appreciate that TS users will approach your assurance with a somewhat jaundiced eye ... As with Sara and others, I'll hold the celebrations until the new version of TS is on my hard disk.

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Kurt — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:30:55 GMT

Sara is right - stop celebration UNTIL at least the upgrade of teh current version 3.x (vista-compatibility) is on our harddrive .....

RE: TopStyle plans and future

mtszymanski — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:44:30 GMT

I view this announcement with both sadness and some possible joy. Sadness in a way because I will not be buying the next version of TopStyle personally. But primarily because it is written for Windows and I have made the transition to using SuSE Linux and open source at home. I have seen other posts requesting that TopStyle be ported to Linux and Nick's response that there are no plans in that direction. Too bad. For anyone in this position, I recommend [url=http://bluefish.openoffice.nl]Bluefish[/url] as the best open source gui text editor. It supports pretty much any programming language you could ask for, including xml, jsp, java, javascript, css, php, and many others.

The one ray of hope I have is that the school district that I work for will purchase a license for version 4. Since I don't have much choice but to use Windows at work, and every program that we use, excepting those that are web-based, requires Windows, I can at least continue to enjoy using TopStyle there. I very much appreciate the features that it offers, and I have promoted it to at least one teacher as an editor of choice. But be aware, as users become more educated to the advantages of open source operating systems and programs, there will continue to be a dwindling market share of Windows. And this is not an idle cry of impending doom, simply read the writing on the wall. As System Administrator I will be doing my part to help the movement along.

I would end on a note of 'thanks for the ride' to Nick. It was great while it lasted.

Regards,

RE: TopStyle plans and future

primortal — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:51:51 GMT

Joy :w00t:, glad to hear some rumblings on updates to TS. Hopefully, like zurdog said, you will allow the TS customers to vote on the features they most want.

RE: TopStyle plans and future

zurdog — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:48:35 GMT

Sounds great! I truly appreciate the response.

Few questions...

What kind of involvement will the community have in TopStyle 4... regarding features, improvements etc?

Will there be some sort of voting system (as there was in the past) for a list of features that we can all vote on?

Will the next version of TopStyle support XML/XSS etc?

Personally I know what made TopStyle a hit was the fact that Nick really listened to his users as to what to put into the program, I hope this version is no different.

-Matt

RE: TopStyle plans and future

Sara — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:16:25 GMT

Holding my breath, but it does indeed sound like good news though I'll hold off the celebrating until I do see the updates and new versions actually downloading to my hd.

TopStyle plans and future

Greg Reinacker — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:07:27 GMT

We've been a bit quiet about TopStyle's future recently (understatement?), so I'm going to try to clear it up now.

First - when we bought Bradbury Software, Nick and I both said publicly that TopStyle would live on. And we fully intend for it to do so.

So why have things been so quiet? The main reason is that we have been working with a number of potential corporate buyers for TopStyle, folks who could take over the product and continue to innovate and enhance it. While these conversations were happening, I couldn't really say anything helpful publicly, and thus chose to wait. In the end, for various reasons, we have chosen to keep TopStyle within the NewsGator product portfolio, and we are doing several things to this end.

First, starting immediately, we will be building an upgrade that will include some bug fixes, including support for Windows Vista. Work on this will start immediately, and I'd expect this release will be ready in the next few weeks.

As you know, we've also been looking for a Delphi developer to help work on TopStyle. This search has yielded many candidates, but none who were a good fit for what we are looking for. We're now expanding this search to the entire continental U.S. effective immediately, and we will consider a remote relationship for the right candidate. If you know someone, definitely refer them!

Somewhat (but not entirely) dependent on that search, we will be building TopStyle 4.0, with a great new set of features that you, our customers, have been asking for.

I know this has taken far too long, and for that I apologize. In retrospect, it would have been better to communicate more openly about as much as we could sooner than now. But you should all know that Nick has been a vocal advocate on your behalf. The prior thread on this topic was getting a little out of hand, and was starting to make personal attacks, and while we haven't moderated that conversation at all, I have asked our support folks to lock the thread from further posts.

I'd also like to say thanks to all of the loyal TopStyle customers for hanging in there with us! Further questions and followup are welcome.

Greg Reinacker
Founder and CTO
NewsGator Technologies, Inc.