NetTalk 6 Release Schedule

[Bruce]

Morning All,

As you probably know Geoff, Rob and I will be attending the CIDC 2011 Devcon in Orlando Florida later this month. On Monday Sept 26, at around 5pm Orlando time, we will be presenting a session "Fun with CapeSoft" which is mostly just having fun and showing off some of the things we've been working on. During this session we will show some of the new features in NetTalk 6.

We have arranged with Devcon organizers John and Arnold that this session may be freely available streamed live as well as soon afterwards in a recorded format. (There are some technical issues which may occur from having a "free" stream inside a "paid for" stream, but if we don't resolve those we will upload the recording of the event within a day or so.) I will post more information on watching the stream here when I have it.

While NetTalk 6 will become available for general purchase on September 26, I wish to stress that we will only be back in the office on October 5. Support before October 5 will be extremely limited (read "most likely none") outside of the actual Devcon event. We will also be unable to update the build while we are away, so I recommend waiting until at least October 5 before installing NetTalk 6. While every effort has been made to preserve perfect backwards compatibility there may well be errors in execution which will need addressing.

As always with a new release there are one or two juicy tidbits included with NetTalk 6 with several more planned for the weeks after the first release. I'm not going to jump the gun by announcing those yet, but suffice to say that I think you'll appreciate them.

Two folk have indicated they would like to pre-purchase an upgrade to take advantage of current exchange rates outside the US. So I've added a product to ClarionShop to allow you to do this, https://www.clarionshop.com/checkout.cfm?pid=1376&q=1& HOWEVER and I want to stress this somewhat, even if you take advantage of this the product will not be available to you before September 26, and possibly not before October 5.

Cheers
Bruce

[Bruce]

Update: Unfortunately one of our automated systems injected a NetTalk 6 notice into the RSS feed rather earlier than we'd expected. I've removed that now, so to those who noticed, my apologies...
We remain on schedule for a first-release around early to middle of October.

cheers
Bruce

[Bruce]

Update: I'm back in the office after returning from Devcon - I showed a bit of what NetTalk 6 can do, and it was well received. The goal is to get the build out within the next 2 to 3 weeks. Actually as soon as I have the basic framework working I'll probably release that, and then iterate fairly quickly after that.

I know there is a download link on our site (this is being automatically generated, and isn't trivial to suppress) but please ignore that for now.

Cheers
Bruce

[Bruce]

Update: 26 October.

I'd hoped by now to be announcing a release build, but alas that's not the case (sorry).

I've created my own delay, by taking this opportunity to refactor the Browse JavaScript object. That took a bit longer than I'd expected, but it something that's been waiting to happen for some time now. Unfortunately this is one of those things that doesn't immediately offer any new "wiz bang" functionality, but does make it possible to add some interesting browse behaviors going forward. What it has done is lift some existing limitations with popup windows a touch - but it's unlikely most people will notice this. Given the potential impact a change of this nature can have (ie bugs introduced), this really is the time to do this work, so I decided to squeeze it in.

Of course there have been lots of suggestions received for possible NT6 features, and these are most welcome. Not all (indeed not many) are likely to be in the first NT6 release, but I'm trying to make sure the foundations are in place to add them when the time comes. So keep sending those through, or post them to the Suggestions forum here.

I'm not sure exactly how long it will be before the first NT6 build is released - but it's likely to be in the order of a "few" weeks. Exactly how many depends a bit on how much I try and squeeze in - but I'm hoping to make it sooner rather than later.

My apologies for the delay - I hope the end result will be worth it (I think it will be!)

cheers
Bruce

[Bruce]

Update: 4 November

Good news. A date has been set, the die has been cast - let my sleepless nights begin.

I'm doing a webinar on www.ClarionLive.com on November 18, at 9am PST. That'll be the official "launch" on NetTalk 6, and I'll be showing off some of the new features already in, talking about the plans for moving forward, and generally waving my hands around.

To celebrate we'll have a small party in our offices on the evening of Friday 18 November at 6pm local (South African) time. All developers in the neighberhood (and indeed any from any other neighberhood) are welcome. The webinar starts at 7pm South African time so we'll hang around, eat , drink and chat before 7, then do the webinar for both the folk who are there, and the rest of the world on ClarionLive. ** If you are coming to our office please let us know asap so we can make sure we have sufficient snacks and drinks on hand **

As you may have heard we've also taken the step of "Sponsoring" the ClarionLive connection for November, so there won't be the usual 100-attendee limit for the webinar itself. (The limit is 500, but I doubt we'll get that!) So there will be plenty of spaces available if you want to attend the event online.

Indeed we're doing presentations every Friday this month on ClarionLive (Secwin tonight, then Insight, NetTalk and finishing up with RightReports.) To if you haven't joined a ClarionLive session yet, hop over to www.clarionlive.com sign up, and join in. You will need audio on your computer, but no microphone is required.

So that's the status - November 18 it is !

Cheers
Bruce

[Bruce]

Hi All,

Well Friday's webinar went of very well and the response so far has been somewhat overwhelming. I appreciate all the kind remarks people have sent me - it certainly helps to keep the motivation up.

I was hoping to post the build on Friday, but I spotted a regression during the webinar and I didn't want to let that in. That proved to be a real tricky one to fix hence the delay. At the moment I'm just running through the examples (as many as I can) to see if there are any other obvious regressions. If there aren't then the build should go up today.

My apologies for the delay, but there's no point in shipping something with known regressions. there's a lot of code changed "under the hood" so there are bound to be some bugs and possibly regressions that I _don't_ spot without me including the ones I know about.

Believe me, I'm as keen to get the build out the door as you are to get it, I just want to make sure it's as smooth an upgrade as it can be.

cheers
Bruce