Astraware Platypus reviewed

I was planning to take my time for this review. For once, I would sit down and make a proper evaluation. After all, when you have a ton of work to do, who can afford to play games? Our Office Wii is locked up, our lunch time has been reduced to half, all because of our work load.

So, how come I found time to evaluate Astraware's Platypus? Simple: I couldn't put it down. It's addictive. It's old fashioned in a world with interactive super controllers, tilting phones and jumping up and down in front of a television set. But, that's good! I love the retro feel of the game. It's shoot-em-up old style, and it's completely destroying my work day.

The game is very responsive, you really get an arcade type feeling looking at your business phone. The colors and graphics are nice and it's very playable. Nice things like automatic suspension when an email arrives made me smile. It's a jewel of a game and one that is worth it's money.

Maybe I will update this review a bit later to tell you what things you can find in the city of Collosatropolis. But to do that, I will have to end here and get back to it (now, would that be the game or my work...).

10 out of 10 for this one!

Bye,
Bart

DevExpress apparently will support unicode with their controls

It is not official yet, but in one of the Delphi news groups there was the following reply from DevExpress' Julian Bucknall to a question if they will support Unicode.

Re: Delphi 2008, Unicode and Dev Express

Tony

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:22:46 -0500, Tony Caduto
 wrote:

>Anyone know if DevExpress is going to release versions of the Quantum
>Grid etc that will be Unicode Compatible with Delphi 2008?

Duh . Of course we are.=20

You know you can just email me if you have questions like this. Anyone
can. Heck, I don't even try and hide my email address with DOTs and
ATs.

--
Cheers, Julian

-----------------------------------------------------------
Julian M Bucknall
CTO, Developer Express, www.devexpress.com
julianb@devexpress.com

Personal blog at http://www.boyet.com
Company blog at http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/ctodx
Author of "Tomes of Delphi: Algorithms and Data Structures"=20
Read my articles in PCPlus every month
-----------------------------------------------------------

Kind of makes my day :-)

Spending a lot of time on your support department pays off,

I am using third party controls wherever I can. If I can buy the stuff that I need, we don't need to develop it myself. Buying software components is always cheaper than developing them yourself.

If you look at two component(s) (sets) that I am using (DevExpress Suite and ProfDHTMLEdit) you can tell which gives good value for money. We spent $3000 on DevExpress software and about $100 on the ProfDHMLEdit component. DevExpress is way cheaper for us and I will always recommend that to others. ProfDHTMLEdit has proven to be very expensive and I won't recommend it to anyone.

I'll explain why. But first, let me emphasize that the two software packages don't compare in functionality. The DevExpress package is much bigger and serves quite different purposes then ProfDHTMLEdit, hence the difference in price. But, that's not the point. The point is: what do I get for my money, support wise. And how does that make you feel as a customer.

Another thing to know is that I realize that DevExpress is a much larger company then the single person that supports ProfDHTMLEdit. But, again, that is not the point. The point is: what does attention, curtosy and friendliness do to you.

The Bad Support Scenario
Once upon a time I started to use ProfDHTMLEdit. I was looking for a WYSIWYG XML editor, couldn't find a suitable one, and ended up with ProfDHTMLEdit. It is a HTML editor with no special features to support XML. However, using some tricks and stylesheets I was able to make into the light weight XML editor that I was looking for. Usage of our software grew and I was beginning to get strange bug reports that were caused by ProfDHTMLEdit. I looked high and low but couldn't find a cause nor a solution. I contacted the author of the component and at first he was very helpfull in trying to locate the problems. But, after some time it became clear it wasn't the usual kind of problem and he sort of gave up. I tried to insist, offering to travel to him in Russia, looking for the cause together. But, he wanted a lot of money for that (starting with a 'setup fee' of $1500) and that made me move away from that option.

I tried other components, but there still wasn't a good alternative available. I continued debugging, tried wild guessed work arounds, all to no avail. To make a very long story short: after two years I found help with Marco Cantu and we were able to solve the problem in the end. It was all caused by a memory corruption in the ProfDHTMLEdit control. We were even able to create a good work around for the problem.

I reported this (including demo program of the problem) to the author again and also found that my work around benifitted other users. I have had no official reaction or software update since. In general, the questions asked on the support forum are answered in one sentence, sometimes a single word. No thank you, sorry, did it help? None of that. You feel like you are a burden to the supplier instead of a customer.

I never did a calcuation of the actual cost of this simple, one component. But it must be in the many tens of thousands of euros. Remember the original purchase price was about 100 euro.

The Good Support Scenario
As said earlier, we spent a lot of money on the DevExpress components. Starting with buying the one component pack, gradually we used more and more DevExpress components and ended up with a VCL subscription (worth $600 / year). All in all a couple of thousand dollars changed hands.

In the years that I have used the DevExpress components I have reported numerous bugs and questions with DevExpress. Let me just describe the typical flow of support messages.

1. I report my problem on the website. Using a form I can supply the necessary details, search existing questions and knowledge base. If it is a new problem or question I can submit it.
2. I will be notified when the issue is accepted (or declined) and will be informed when:
1. The issued has been reviewed
2. An answer was given
3. A suggestion for a new feature is accepted
4. The new feature is planned
5. The new feature is actually implemented
3. If the answer to a question cannot be described in text only (in a few lines), a sample project is always supplied.
4. I can respond again using text, modifying the sample program or whatever I feel is the right way.

I will always get a prompt answer. If a solution or answer is not easy to give, they will tell you they need more time. You can track the issues you have opened. You really feel there's somebody on the other side that is working with you.

If I had to pay the hours that the DevExpress support people spend on me, I probably owned them another couple of thousand. And, having such excellent support, saved me a lot (and I mean a lot) of time.

The point and the benefits

Working in a software company myself I can see where the benefits are with excellent and abundant support:

1. Your customers think very highly of you.
2. They will always recommend you to others.
3. Your customers will give you much more feed back, which is invaluable to you. You will know precisely what they want.
4. Your customers will probably come back to you without thinking twice.

And probably there are a couple of other reasons to think of.

In any case (and I have writting that down a couple of times before): the support team of DevExpress is that level of support that we strive for. I can only hope we can reach that in our live time.

Bye,
Bart

Ps: right after posting this, I found an artical that touches some of this

Ps2: coincidence or not? Only hours after I posted this, I got a response from the ProfDHTMLEditor with an official solution to the 2-year old problem... Maybe blogging is gooed for something.

Makayama's Touchbrowser

Now, here's a line that you won't see too often: I love software by Microsof and I love the iPhone. When first reading about the iPhone I wasn't convinced at all about its innovative power. But, once I got my hands on it, I was hooked. I think that the iPhone really is a next generation thing.

So, anytime I read that a piece of hardware or software brings the iPhone experience to Windows I am intrigued and I have to take a look. Now, when the TouchBrowser was announced I was very optimistic, because the pocket version of IE is, well, not too modern. After reading that the TouchBrowser was 'nothing more than a wrapper around IE' my hopes died immediately.

But, after using the TouchBrowser I think it really could be innovative. It eliminates all the clutter and chunky user interface bits that go with Windows Mobile applications. It really is a 'fingers only' application. It performs well and it maximizes the usage of your touch screen. And I love the way you enter URLs; I didn't flip my TYTN II open once to go to the keybard.

However, as said, it could innovative. There's a couple of things wrong and missing. First and foremost, you need a zoom function. You have no clue what is on the page. There's a couple of small scroll bars to tell you where you are on the page, but as you don't know what's on the invisible parts of the page, that doesn't help much.

Other things are minor, but I was looking for that. Increasing font size (if you
are over 40 like me, you need glasses or bigger fonts), better management of your Favorites (you get the IE-favorites), progress indicator for loading pages ("please wait" doesn't help)

There's also a couple signs that it's a first release. The close application button doesn't work, after ending the task via the task manager you can't restart TouchBrowser. There is no home button. The settings page looks clumsy. Stuff like that.

Final conclusion: we're not quite there yet, but I think the iPhone experience will eventually be available on Windows Mobile. It won't be with (this version of) TouchBrowser, but we're getting close. Rest assured I will give version 2 a very close look.

See http://www.makayama.com/touchbrowser.html

Bart Roozendaal, Sevensteps