New Features of TC8 - To Help Us Decide Whether To Test

[Phred]

Holger!
I'm just showing how easy it is to promote new features in a product.
And how helpers could help, in our context.
Is all. :-/

[HolgerK]

Hmm, do you really think that this the right way for a Shareware product?

Regards
Holger

[Phred]

I don't know that I understand your meaning, Mr H.

Here's another one: Winlock
http://www.crystaloffice.com/winlock/history2.html

[HolgerK]

I don't know that I understand your meaning, Mr H.

I don't understand your advertising for remote access software.

Ghisler Software Gmbh is a company with two employees.
Total Commander is a Shareware product priced at 32€ (free lifetime updates included).

Afaik there are more than 200k licenses sold over the years.
Multiply this with multi user licenses and you may imagine the number of licensed user + add those who don't care to use the software as Shareware or cracked version beyond the 30day limit.
1 million TC users? (only Christian can tell)

The "lot of gnomes" who are helping here in the forum are ordinary (anonymous) TC users with no official relationship to Ghisler Software GmbH; doing it just for fun, beside their normal work.
And the "lot of gnomes" are not so many as you may think (about 130 senior/power member with more than 200 post; not all of them are supporter or do have the technical equipment or knowledge to use such a software.
->(1 million vs. 100 people)

Beside of this:
Would you really allow an anonymous person to access your computer via Internet?
->(1 million vs. 2 people.)

And how will such a software be used to help the million licensed users to decide whether to test/use a beta version or not?
Is a beta tester who is not willing to read the already provided information (like history.txt) a good tester?

Marketing and promotion a software is another point (and I really don't know how the software you've mentioned will help in this area).

Kind regards
Holger

[Phred]

Yes, okay, Holger; an interesting take on Ghisler, Inc. Much as I suspected.

But even so - ignore the software I've cited (I'm not advertising anything); just look at the list of 'news' I'm pointing to. I would have thought that someone amongst us, or a small group of, beavers could have put together a simple list like those in my links above: e.g.

Version 5.0
• New user interface.
• Overal performance improved.
• Internet Explorer 8 compatibility.
• Check For Updates.
• Ability to register WinLock remotely using WinLock Remote Administrator.
• Now WinLock is compatible with Vista Aero visual improvements.
• About:blank page now enabled by default.
• -open command line parameter.
• Ability to change password in command prompt.
• Balloon hints.
• Ability to redirect blocked sites.
• Notifications.
• Ability to limit the log file size.
• Read-only access to the blocked folders.
• Fade-in notifications effect.
• Improved Windows Vista compatibility.
• Improved logging.
• Improved restrictions management under limited user account.
• Improved command line parameters procesing.
• Changed -profile command line parameter processing.
• Bug fixed: website blocking did not work correctly under restricted user account.
• Fixed bug in remote administration.
• Minor changes and fixes.

BTW, I think your remarks need some further comment; I wonder if they've been made before:

1. CHF40 for a lifetime of maintenance is far too cheap, IMHO.

2. Christian wouldn't be the first to reverse an 'unlimited' policy in the shareware sphere, once the scope of the job has expanded and its dimensions have become more clear to the developers
2a. Vn.8 should be a prime opportunity for an upgrade charge
2b. At least there's an opportunity for more revenue with Android

3. It would seem that Christian is a Wozniak. TC needs a Jobs as well.
3a. How many years did it take for the screenshot(s) to expand from one 35k graphic to the set there is now..?

4. As I've said above, with a structureless, if not unformated, list like history.txt I fear that TC's feature-set will NEVER be properly revealed. Years will go by before the core of TC users ever find out that there's long been certain features available, but never known of
4a. In another context, for example, how much of the world has ever used a Help window for a Windows program, and, in the absence of a Find icon or menu item, simply pressed Ctrl-F?
4b. I claim that the TC product is not being well served
4c. And I think that's a great shame

5. I claim that qualifying testers by their preparedness to wade through an ad hoc list of history items is a very poor criterion
Who said 'there's only 60 minutes in each hour'?
There's expertise here in this community, surely? Why inhibit it?
Testing is a formal discipline and tools have been developed to assist the process - see Mantis Bug Tracker, for instance. Surely this forum could provide a modicum of assistance to the process?

After my current work project I'll give it a go.
Want to get it started in the meantime?

Kind regards,
Phd

[ghisler(Author)]

There aren't really that many new features in TC8 - the most important are listed in the help, section "What's new". Here it is for beta 9:

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 8.0 beta 9:

- Compare by contents (x64 only): Support for files >2GB
- Lister: Auto-rotate jpg images loaded via GDI+ to the angle stored in the EXIF information
- See history.txt for all fixes

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 8.0 beta 8:

- New options in the search&replace section of the Multi-rename tool dialog box: 1x (only first occurrence) and [E] (change extension or not)
- Lister: F3 now also works with folders (mainly interesting with plugins)
- Synchronize dirs: "By content" option now also works with packer plugins which support the "search by content" option
- See history.txt for all fixes

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 8.0 beta 2-7:

- These are bugfix releases, there are no major new features
- See history.txt for all fixes

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 8.0 beta 1:

- This is the first 64-bit version of Total Commander. There will also be a 32-bit version later in this beta test. 64-bit programs can only load 64-bit libraries (dlls), and since all plugins are dlls, the plugins need to be converted to 64-bit too. Therefore it's not recommended to use this version for every day work until a majority of plugins has been ported to 64-bit.
- Enhanced progress dialog handling: Progress is now handled asynchronously, so it will no longer slow down any file operations. Especially the copying, moving and deleting of many small files should be much faster now. Also the number of files and bytes handled and the total files/bytes are shown now.
- Lister: Show jpg, gif and png images in Lister without plugins
- Search function: In field "Search in", a list file can be specified like this: @c:\path\searchfile.txt. The file must contain one file/dir name per line, absolute or relative to the location of the list file
- Multi-rename tool enhancements: Allow backslashes in name field, directly create sub-folders for moving files
- Draw new style (Windows Vista/7) expand/collapse icons in tree
- Copy directly from FTP or virtual folders (e.g. the desktop) to file system plugins
- "Skip all" in "copy as admin" function
- Use new Explorer method on Windows 7 to show file time stamps (not changing between summer and winter), can be changed via wincmd.ini (NewTimeZoneMethod)
- See history.txt for all additions and fixes

[Phred]

Many thanks, Mr G. I see there are progressive additions to TC in version 8, and sundry fixes.
It will be a pleasure to try the program out and to watch for any errors. Thanks for the summary.

I've just noticed the 'Internal Associations (Total Commander Only)' menu item, and the Copy to Clipboard functions under Mark. I expect there are more features I've missed; we must work on that wiki.

TC keeps on giving.