Public Release Date?

[bobdapunk]

thank you for the response, even if it is not what i wanted =p

[Ultima]

Well, you're certainly not going to get an answer out of anyone else besides Directrix, and he's kinda busy with stuff, and working on a new private beta =T

[TheDude]

cause he's doing it free in his own spare time. Below was featured in another thread, but I feel it's applicable:

Complaints about the free ice cream

Gratitude is a virtue...

In other words, don't complain about the free ice cream.

This is one of those statements that sounds good, but is wrong.

The fallacy is that it doesn't take into account that any well publicized free item displaces other items, whether free or not.

A perfect example is Microsoft's free Internet Explorer.

The fact that it is free:

- doesn't mean that it can't be improved by intelligent criticism.

- doesn't mean that you are ungrateful by complaining about its faults.

- doesn't mean that it isn't a commercial product because it competes with commercial products.

- doesn't mean that it is immune to anti-trust and anti-monopoly prosecution.

And all of that applies to both utorrent and its WebUI. The existence of the WebUI (even though it is vaporware) tends to discourage other free WebUI's from coming into existence (just as IE does).

A great example of the damage that can be done by free giveaways can be found in the torrents themselves. All someone has to do is do a bad job of transferring a great live concert to digital from cassette tape, with all sorts of nasty glitches, and then publicize that torrent heavily, and that crap can push better versions of the concert out of circulation - by sheer volume. (I'm thinking of several specific examples as I type this.)

[Ultima]

Determination's point in posting that wasn't to say you shouldn't complain about WebUI. It's to say "stop pestering about the release date."

[Determination]

sheesh.

The WebUI is not Vaporware, and it will be done when the 1 person that is working on it can complete it. That's just how development in µTorrent works, we never know.

[Stoffi]

is it possible to know in which edition, of µTorrent the webui will be available? i.e. µTorrent 1.6...

[Ultima]

It's not what version of µTorrent, it's whenever Directrix finishes.

[dbr]

My problem isn't that theres no release date, that I know it's just one person working on it etcetcblahblah.. It's the reason given for keeping the beta closed, and not releasing what a lot of people really would find very usefull (myself included)

A while ago I asked on the IRC channel why, from what I understood of the very.. limited reply was that the WebUI wasn't being a public beta mainly because of fear they'd (or "you'd") get hundereds of people complaining "xyz doesn't work :'( "..

If thats true (correct me if I'm wrong, although it does kind of make sense in a screwed up way), you mention your having problems with the colum code.. How many web developers do you think use uTorrent? Quite a few I imagine.. I bet if it was public, you could ask for help, and I'm almost certain you'd get someone who could sort the CSS/Javascript/HTML/whatever the problem is..

In short : there's a lot of smart people around, if you let people help, they will..

As for the people complaining about the beta.. Surely there will be far more people complaining about the webUI not being released, that you'd get from the few people complaining about bugs, plus the added advantage of my other point, they (or someone else) might be able to offer a fix for the problem.. But by keeping it closed, you limit who can help you fix bugs..

In my opinion, if you released the webUI, with a simple disclaimer (a floating div-tag, at the botom of the screen, say?) with text saying "This is a beta release, [link to webUI-beta-bug thread]report any bugs here. Do not report any bugs already reported", or something less long-winded, you'd get very few people complain about known bugs (for which you could just reply "It's beta, shhh", which is easier explaining why "the webUI options are there, but it doens't work!1" surely..?), and you'd be giving people the chance to help their favourite software's favourite dev people by helping with a feature they really want/need, without having to make it opensource, since HTML/CSS/Javascript is (I'm almost certain) uncompiled/encrypted anyway..

To summarize.. I fail to see why it's a bad thing to release a public-webUI beta..?

- Ben

[Ultima]

People don't listen to such warnings anyway, so that's entirely pointless -- yes, I've seen it happen enough times. And the WebUI isn't the first thing to be privately beta tested anyway, so I'm not seeing why it's such a big problem. They're early builds for a reason -- because EVERYTHING's being tested, and there WILL be a LOT of bugs. If we were to release it to hundreds of people, we'll UNDOUBTEDLY get the same reports like... 10 times each. We don't need that. Yeah, there are other web developers out there, but opening the beta testing isn't going to make the situation any better anyway -- for every 1 web developer that can potentially help, we'll be getting maybe a crapload of other non web developers complaining about known/reported issues.

Aside from all that, we never said there wouldn't be a public beta test. If that day comes, people can start complaining about the remaining bugs that the current beta testers didn't catch, which will (naturally) be a lot less than if a raw early beta were released.

Isolation and whatnot isn't always great, but Directrix is doing great on his own so far, and hasn't really needed all that much help in regards to coding.

[Firon]

(@Directrix) planning on having something ready for the people that should be in [sOMETHING] tonight and then tomorrow a new beta for the n00biles

[WebReaper]

I have to agree with Ultima. Whilst I'm desperate to give the webui a shot (and I'm a web developer so should be able to restrain myself from posting dumb/repeated bug reports ) you only have to read the forums to see quite how many n00bs repeatedly post the same dumb basic questions about stuff without searching the faq or the forum. And they're for stuff which isn't in beta, so god knows how many threads would need trashing by Firon if the webui went straight into public beta - his mouse would be worn out.

[DonGato]

Consider it being now an alpha where lots of features doesn't work or give errors. I don't think general public would benefit from that. And the report process is more complex that a simple post in a forum (that worked the first days but now another tool/process is used).

[Firon]

The new alpha is working on Firefox only right now. And with issues, still.

[ICleolion]

Yeah believe me you people dont want it yet.

[Game90]

it should be safe to assume that the webUI is weeks away?

[Firon]

No, 'cause Directrix is not busy with the university anymore.

[Ultima]

There are a bunch of bugs, but Directrix is fixing the more obvious ones quickly. He'd probably have to fix up rendering in other browsers too, but that comes after the glaring things in Firefox are fixed up. You guys'll love the niceties that were added in this release -- functionality-wise, it hasn't changed all that much from 0.2, but under the hood, the major change was the table code.

[dAbReAkA]

u speak like u've seen it..

[Ultima]

Because I have...?

[Firon]

We HAVE. Ultima, icleolion, and I are the secret alpha testers.

[dAbReAkA]

and u didnt invite me to the party? ooh u'll see

[DonGato]

/me initiating a DOS on Ultima account.

[Ultima]

lol in due time, in due time. At this point, other than it not being entirely feature-complete, it's mostly spit and shine polish that needs to be done on the Web UI. Even though not a staggering amount of new features were added in this release, it's (IMHO) something that was well worth the wait. Lines are really getting blurrier between Web UI and the native µTorrent interface.

[ICleolion]

Yup, she be a tasty tool now. She will be worth the wait people, so be patient

[Preatorian]

I want to volunteer for apha and beta and whatever testing. I'm a html+javascript+php developper, so I might be useful finding the bugs in the interface.

Thank you.