Will Flash Popularity Become AIR Popularity? [closed] - user-interface

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[This is a community Wiki so do not bother voting it down if it seems like a poll question. It is.]
Will Adobe be able to translate its success in Flash Penetration (although also questionable, see my post here) to Adobe AIR? Is Adobe AIR the "next big thing" in a desktop platform, just another player (along with what else?), or will it die a silent and unimportant death?

Unfortunately no, until they sort out, at the least, the following issue:
When you visit a site that needs Flash and you haven't got Flash installed, you get a very standard looking popup asking you if you to install it, and mentioning in the notes that it may not be safe to install an untrusted plugin.
When you visit a site that lets you download an AIR app, it pops up big red screaming warnings about the imminent trashing of your computer, the theft of your identity and a life of torment[1]. Unless, of course, all the bedroom programmers decide to cough up the ongoing cost of certification.
User encouragement FAIL. Hobby developer encouragement FAIL. Technophobe terrorficiation avoidance FAIL.
I love AIR, but I don't know what they were thinking with the installer. Laywers' office moved closer to the developers' over at HQ or something?
[1]Actual message may vary.

Simple answer NO
It's not fair to compare Flash's web success with Desktop or obvious reasons.
Flash developers were already using flash to develop desktop applications and now they've got a better framework. It'll be used by so many people but I don't it ever will be that popular.

I think that AIR will be around for a long time, it is great for web geeks who want desktop versions of the web applications.
I doubt that it will ever reach mainstream appeal, the masses need flash to watch their funny YouTube videos, but they'll never think to get AIR in order to use TweetDeck. The desktop apps they use are the ones that are already installed on their machine.

If AIR has improved incorporation of HTML content, it will be very successful.
If the ability to render HTML content has not been improved, then my humble opinion is that it will be mixed.

No.
The competition on desktop application market is much bigger, and users are expectiong more functionality and performance from desktop application than from web application, and AIR is just not there yet wrt performance and desktop capabilities.

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How to sell software online: from freshly compiled executable to final product [closed]

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Suppose I have a freshly compiled and tested 100 MB software. I want to eventually distribute it and sell it online as a product. This is a cross-platform product (done in C++).
What are the needed technical steps to achieve this? For each step, a description and an example of some software (if pertinent) would help. Also, how important is it would be helpful too.
My problem is that it is not really clear what are the stages to go through to release a software online. This list would help me a lot to know what steps I should investigate in priority.
What I am not talking about / interested in (because it is mainly the results I got while searching for this):
Website building;
Marketing & Sales;
Continuous Integration servers;
Steam, Mac Store, Windows Store;
Open Source.
Steps I identified:
Obfuscate: not sure about this one;
Licensing System: activation code system integrated in the software directly (See Digital River, SafeNet, Reprise, Flexera);
Installers: MSI for Windows (see Wix), DMG for mac;
Code Signing: ensures that your users do not get warnings (Verisign, GlobalSign...)
Free Trial Distribution: putting the installers on our own site is risky because of bandwidth and lags. Your users should be able to download a free trial quickly wherever they are. So a CDN would help (AWS CloudFront).
Auto Update System: notifiy the users, download and install new versions (Omaha);
Activation: this allows the user to activate the product online or directly from within the product;
I think that these two steps are the missing pieces in your list:
Write documentation (in your case PDF/RTF/HTML, or online tutorial)
Integrate a payment provider that will accept the payment on behalf of you
With the above two steps you should be ready to go.
There are some books that I can recommend you (they are 10 year old now, but you see shareware/try before you buy/ software is an old thing - nowadays people tend to write web apps or mobile mostly):
http://www.alibris.com/From-Program-to-Product-Turning-Your-Code-Into-a-Saleable-Product-Rocky-Smolin/book/10572213?matches=50
http://www.alibris.com/Micro-Isv-From-Vision-to-Reality-Bob-Walsh/book/9122742?matches=37

Free alternative to Atlassian Greenhopper/PivotalTracker? [closed]

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I'm working with my brother on a website idea we have, and we'd like to use a tool to plan sprints and assign estimates to individual tickets.
Atlassian's JIRA+Greenhopper looks fantastic but costs $20/month and at this stage we're just validating our idea and would rather not spend money on a tool if we can avoid it.
Are there any free alternatives to these tools?
Taiga is 100% free and has all the features that comes with something like JIRA.
http://taiga.io/
It even has a burn-down chart! So that's a win!
Here's a site with a nice overview of what Taiga integrates with and real developer opinions on the tool.
http://stackshare.io/taiga
Trello is a good tool for creating task boards and tracking work for small teams.
https://trello.com/
I get this question a lot as a Scrum Trainer.
I strongly recommend Index Cards and a Physical Scrum Board. While it won't calculate time addition for you, that task is trivial and the 'information at a glance' that a Scrum Board offers is hugely beneficial.
If you absolutely HAVE to have an electronic board, try Visual Studio Online (TFS in the cloud) which, at present, is free for up to 5 users.
Another option (We use Jira) would be YouTRACK. http://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/buy/
It is free for up to 10 users and seems to offer pretty much the same functionality.
DISCLAIMER: I have never used YouTRACK on any level. IntelliJ is a great product though.
For Agile project management, I have used extensive Thoughtworks - Mingle
It's free for 5 users.
Another good alternative could be agilefant. Agilefant offers a free and open source product that can be downloaded and deployed into your own private cloud.
If you are looking open source project management, which you can host on your own, the following list could be useful:
ProjectLibre is a java based ms-project rich client alternative
LibrePlan is a rich client and based on these videos it seems like ms-project and includes hours spend by user on task, collaboration was not visible in the videos
OpenProject is a web based software with features such as issues, time lines (gantt chart), calendars, meeting notes and more
Redmine is a web based software using the Ruby on Rails framework that includes issues, work log, a wiki and a gantt chart and more.
You can also check TargetProcess (http://www.targetprocess.com/pricing/) it's free for 5 users
i use it for three months and it's very good
I used Trello (http://trello.com) and Mingle (http://getmingle.io) on two different projects. Trello is great for tracking tasks and collaborating for small team. My trello project team had 3 members, we were distributed. We also use Google drives to track unstructured information. My mingle project team have more than 10 people, and used it for years. Team love using it for standup on big touch TV and different roles (BA/QA/PM) like it because you have have your own workspace track different tasks and sometime build their own report).
IceScrum.
It's open source and you can run on your own server.
The best open source project planning in my opinion!
https://www.teamwork.com/pricing
"If you don't pay after the 30 day free trial you can still use Teamwork Projects free forever"
"We also have a Free Forever Plan with 2 projects and 100mb space"

New desktop GUI developer; can choose any platform [closed]

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I'm planning a client-server product for a tiny, low-volume, high-cost vertical market. One of the components of the product will be a desktop application, simple to moderate in complexity, for data entry and uploading to a central server from remote PCs and/or Macs via SOAP. The server is a Java web app.
Customers will be choosing their platform (Windows or Mac) based on what the client app runs on, so my options are wide-open here. However, I will be developing on a Mac and have a strong allergy to MS-specific technologies (sorry). The app will not need to run on any non-desktop-computer devices and I have total freedom to say it will support X but not Y or Z without any negative consequences (quite the luxury, to be sure).
I have a lot of experience in server-side development but very little in desktop GUI stuff, and am evaluating my options on the client - basically what do I want to commit to learning over the next 6+ months. I have server-side Java experience as well as a brief dabble in iPhone development, which went OK.
Overall I'm looking for:
Ease of learning & development
IDE support
Healthy surrounding ecosystem (libraries, tools, help, etc.)
Quality documentation
My options as I see them, in rough order of how I'm currently mentally ranking them:
Java Swing
Cocoa
Java SWT
JavaFX
Adobe AIR
XULRunner
Am I leaving anything out?
If your application has to support both Windows and Macs, I would suggest you avoid using languages which need compilation. In that case, Java, Python, and CS4 will be your candidates. Personally, I would go for Java Swing since it's proven to work on a number of platforms (not flawlessly tho') without the need of extra libraries. Some people complain about Swing, but my experience with it isn't that terrible. Well, maybe it was because I don't use it for huge and complex interfaces. If you choose to go with Swing, try to see if you can hand-code the interface yourself, it isn't that terrible, but it does have a learning curve. Good luck!
If you are an experienced web developer, you can try Electron, which allows you to develop desktop apps using HTML, CSS and JS. Electron apps are cross-platform and will run on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Alternatives to MS project server [closed]

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I manage a small group and I'd keep my work breakdown in project. However, it's difficult to provide my team with an adequate view into the project and ability to report on their progress. I looked at MS Project Server (the sharepoint webpart) but it's an expensive proposition.
Has anyone had any experience with any other tool (commercial is fine) that helps team view and report on their work as managed by MS Project? FWIW, I have looked at OpenProj and it appears to be a decent solution for viewing project files on the desktop. Anything web-based, keeping in mind that I'd like people to report on their work not just view their work.
**A good web based hosted Project Management software that suits my EPM needs is called valleyspeak project server, which I found at www.valleyspeak.com. One of the main reasons why I like the software is the fact that I could continue to work in Microsoft Project 2007 while sharing my Microsoft Project plans with my teams.
Because it is a hosted service, I did not have to buy expensive software or deal with installation and maintenance headaches. The functionality that I have with valleyspeak to manage my geographically dispersed teams works well for me.**
Not exactly the tool rather technology, but i lately start reading about scrum and find it interesting and useful.
As "llya" suggested before maybe you should have a look at scrum as a methodology.
But on your question here you have some really good web-based alternatives:
acunote works pretty well also, and is web based and free for small teams.
The one I personally use trac
scrumworks
Here are a few open source apps to look at:
Joynet Connector
http://joyent.com/connector/
Clocking IT
http://www.clockingit.com/
RedMine
http://www.redmine.org/
You can host them your self, but the first two do offer hosted versions
Jason
You could try Work Bench.
Take a look at www.ibnportal.com
Take a look at Projec.to online Microsoft Project viewer. It allows to upload MS Project files (.mpp), view them online, and share with others via browser, apart from Microsoft Project.
Disclosure: I'm one of the developers of this service.
Daptiv might be worth a look. http://www.daptiv.com/
Try InTask Professional (www.intaskrnd.com) - fast, cheap, tons of features, multi-user multi project, frequent updates. really good piece of software. alternatively you can try basecamp but it's much more expensive...

Project Management + SCM for techies and non-techies? [closed]

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I've recently begun evaluating a few project management projects for the company I work for. It's the classic case - growing company looking for the right solution (meaning, free or really cheap). It's a combination shop - Windows, Macs, and Linux on the desktop. The tech savviness, of course, ranges from newbie to unix guru.
I have yet to find anything really close to a total solution. I don't expect to find one, but I am looking for suggestions/guidance/any sort of feedback based on people's experience.
What I'm looking for:
web based
methodology independent (not looking for an agile solution, etc.)
free or really cheap
document management
timelines and milestones
task tracking and assigning
reporting
source control
development wiki
I've looked at Trac, Projectivity, Basecamp, JIRA, RT, XPlanner, and SharedPlan. I've stayed away from Bugzilla due to previous unhappy experiences with it. None of these things really does everything - some are extendable, but I'd check here before going down that path.
Thanks,
Read through Edward Tufte's long-running Ask E.T. topic Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts). There is no consensus answer, but a lot of things have been evaluated.
link text
Trac - integration of tickets / wiki / commit-comments is great.
Caveat: installation can be PITA...
Check out Jira Studio. All of Atlassian's apps, hosted for you.
http://www.jira.com/
You get wiki/tracker/svn browser and more.
Have a look at Redmine, it's a Rails app. Haven't used it yet myself, but thinking about moving to it from activecollab. This applications seems to be evolved quite fast last year.
My experience of Jira (with Confluence for the wiki) has been rather good, although it is quite pricey the support people were very responsive and helpful. The place where I used that had svn for version control, and the two played together OK. On the other hand I found Xplanner to be a very odd app - really inflexible if you don't want to be doing XP, and surprisingly documentation-centric for an XP shop.
If you don't mind doing a bit of configuration yourself and have a windows server somewhere in your shop then you could set up your very own customized project management system in SharePoint.
* web based
* methodology independent
* free or really cheap
* document management
* timelines and milestones
* task tracking and assigning
* reporting
* source control
* development wiki
The source control system is not a part of SharePoint so it is really a question whether that requirement is paramount or not. But besides that you will have all of the above for free if you install WSS (comes free with a 2003/2008 server)
There is even a book from O'Reilly about how to set up a PMIS in SharePoint
One solution for the more visual of us would be to use Drupal 6x. with the Project and Subversion (now Version Control) modules. I prefer Joomla with ProjectFork, but until its modded with a repo browser, this will have to do.
Hope this helps.
http://drupal.org/project/project
I looked hard at Alfresco and Joomla.
None met my needs because I wanted the ultimate in simplicity. But, you seem to prefer having the kitchen sink included (while keeping it easy to use, I guess), so either one of these might be right for you.
Currently, I'm throwing together my own using Django, keeping only the project-deadline, forum and file-versioning concepts.

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