runrev 4.0 - kudos and a gripe

[Bill Marriott]

Hi David,

> I'd prefer not to find out that the Rev Web Plugin
> lack certain core features a few weeks before release, and I'd like to 
> think
> that by suggesting and discussing them with the community this input would
> help RunRev ensure the new products are as good as they could be given the
> resources invested.

What is *not* going to be in the first version of the plug-in (e.g.: talking 
with JavaScript) is something that has only recently been decided, as we 
approach the betas and release. This is typical of the software development 
cycle; you cut features you don't think will make it as the ship date nears.

I have to say that I find runrev quite open to input from members of the 
community. After all, my association with them began as a poster to the 
use-rev list. Most all of the development priorities over the last two years 
(beginning with Rev 2.8.1 and the free Rev 2.9 release) have been driven by 
communication with users -- either through reading the forums and lists, 
direct emails, multiple surveys, the Quality Control Center, online events, 
or conferences like last year's RunRevLive.08. (That's why having 
RunRevLive.09 in Edinburgh, where you can speak face-to-face with the entire 
engineering and management team, is such an advantage, and why we've put the 
effort into the Web Simulcast of this year's dev conference.)

The company has grown a lot in this respect and I would suggest it's now 
superior in this regard compared to many other software publishers. It's not 
that we don't know what our users want, or it didn't occur to us that 
communication with JavaScript (or richer text fields) was a desireable 
capability. It's that we have a long list of things we want to do and have 
to choose carefully what comes first. Based on the overwhelmingly 
enthusiastic response to the plugin, I think we've demonstrated it will be 
quite exciting and usable and worthwhile even without this capability in the 
first release.

- Bill