WindowShade - SOFTPEDIA “100% CLEAN” AWARD

This software product was tested in the Softpedia labs on: 06 March 2007

Softpedia guarantees that WindowShade is 100% CLEAN, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.

Download link: www.edgebeyond.com/downloads/windowshade
Homepage: www.edgebeyond.com/windowshade/

If you have any ideas how to improve WindowShade, tell us.

Best regards,
Edge Beyond Team.

Download URL: www.edgebeyond.com/downloads/windowshade
WindowShade home page: www.edgebeyond.com/windowshade

To be closed to such peoples we’ve added translation option to our blog. All translation is powered by Google and made automatically.

Unfortunately, Google’s translation tool is not an expert automation translation tool, but it reproduce main idea of post.

For all other web-developers, who maintains international web-sites I provide a HTML code for that. You can simply add it into your page:

<FORM action="http://translate.google.com/translate"
    method="get" name="translate_form">
    <SELECT style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt; WIDTH: 77px" name="hl">

        <OPTION value="de" selected>German
        <OPTION value="fr">French
        <OPTION value="it">Italian
        <OPTION value="es">Spanish
        <OPTION value="pt">Portuguese
        <OPTION value="ja">Japanese
        <OPTION value="ru">Russian</OPTION>

    </SELECT>

    <INPUT type="hidden" value="en" name="sl">
    <SCRIPT language="javascript">
        <!-- document.write('<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="u"
            VALUE="'+window.location.href+'">');//-->
    </SCRIPT>

    <a href="javascript: document.translate_form.submit();">Translate</a><br />
    <font style="font-size: 7pt;" color="#404040">(powered by
        <a href="http://www.google.com">
            <font color="#000080">G</font>
            <font color="red">o</font>
            <font color="#AAAA00">o</font>
            <font color="#000080">g</font>
            <font color="green">l</font>
            <font color="red">e</font>
        </a>)
    </font>
</FORM>

Enjoy

Best regards,
Pavel.

So, I’ve decided to make a quick update of XSwitch.

Please, if you’ll find any errors, bugs or any other stuff that should be changed/fixed, contact us via email: xswitch@edgebeyond.com

Download link: http://www.edgebeyond.com/downloads/xswitch

Sometimes we’ve got a lot ideas for current version of any program. And after we start developing new version of program, we actually can’t stop developing it Funny, isn’t? So, now I’ll try to formalize some kind of project life-cycle not only for Edge Beyond Products, but almost for every dynamic and features full solution.

Project life-cycle

Well, actually while creating new version of product I follow next system:

• Developer Edition release of a product should crawl. This means it should do the bare minimum to be recognizable as what it’s intended to be. If it’s supposed to be a foo, and someone could look at DE and say, “That’s a foo” you’re done.
• Alpha version should walk. This is where you add enough functionality that the product is useful in day-to-day life. This is not the time for polish. Basically, it’s just adding the things that most people insisted should have been in DE version, because without them, they said, the product is completely useless. They were wrong then, but they’re right now.
• Beta version should run. This is where the product hits its stride. What it does it should do well. It should be comfortable to use. It should be strong, polished, and effective.
• Release candidate should fly. This is where all founded major bugs are fixed, all improvements implemented… On that stage you should not add any major feature into the product. It is an RC version and it should to be ready to be shipped in few hours.
• Post release version (directors cut). This is where the, “Oh man, wouldn’t it be awesome if…” features get added. This is where you start implementing things that aren’t necessarily useful now, but have a lot of possibility. That version will never be released externally. This is only for collecting new features for the next version.

Anyway I try to follow it.

Features per update

Sometime we’ve got to decide, which and how many features should be included in the next version of software. After some thinking over that I draw next conclusions:

• For Major Updates:
  • Add not more than 2 major features for each subversion;
  • Fix as many bugs as you can fix for this version (based on your experience and time limit you have). Pay attention for the major/critical and block bugs.
• For Minor Updates:
  • Fix as many minor bugs as you can for this version;
  • Add some improvements and minor features which will not entail serious program rewriting. But don’t add more that 2 features for on sub-sub version.

Major vs. Minor

After reading what I’ve wrote above, I decided to explain what is the major feature/bug and what is minor feature/bug.

As for myself, the main difference between major and minor is functionality. Usually, minor feature is something like “We’ve got two bindings to rise this action, but in new version we’ll have one more”. The major feature is like “now you have one more new action”. Basically new feature is extremely new feature with basically new bindings.

According to the bugs… Minor bug is like misspells, “unclear” descriptions, some miss-function, that will not entail 3rd party software be crashed. All other bugs is a major. All bugs, that will crash 3rd party software I call “blocker” or “critical”.

Updates per ….. Thoughts about updates rate

Well, what I want to tell you about updates rates? As for me, the optiomal is one month between every release. It doesn’t metter if previous release of this software was half a year ago.

If you’ve released any software less than month ago you should wait a little. Why? First of all - its better for your users and for your especially - not all of your users check you site every day and will download new software in the day it was released. Usually, it take about 1-3 weeks for all your users to get new version. I don’t think that customers will be happy to find out, that you’ve released new versions for many of your products ’cause they need to download it, test it, customize for them it. Yep…

The second point is - search engine ratings. If you’ll release all your updates in one short period - your rating will be increased extremely, but will fail extremely too Pity, isn’t it?

Any the last point - if you have anything for the fast update - why didn’t you included in the previous release?
Well, now thats it. If I’ll have any to add - I’ll do it.

• Skins support.
• Live window preview

Tune it up to you

Well… as far XSwitch now support skins, I disclose few moments about it. We support two types of skins: parted and solid. The difference between it is in layout of XSwitch screen parts.

In parted layout general window consists of few logically divided areas:

• window preview area;
• windows selector area;
• window information area;
• and misc area.

Every area has its own skin settings and can be customized as well…

Skins itself

Skin is a set of images and configuration file. It is clear and well known term. While developing skin subsystem we faced with problem of images types. Which types we should support for the skins? How does skinned window should look like?

So, looking through the existing OS features we’ve made a deal - we support many types of images, but prefer .png images. Why? Using .png images you can easily create gradient alpha channel for the image. So, using that image as skin you’ll create semi-transparent window. In one word it is enhanced image format

I’ll keep you informed about developing process of XSwitch.

Best regards,
Pavel.

Bug fixing at first… There are a number of bugs, which should be fixed in the next version.

The next point - user interface and keyboard interaction. We’ve scan Internet for the XSwtich reviews and found, that it is very hard to customize it. I’ve spend a lot of sleepless nights looking for best solution of how to implement new design (with much more features) and made it easy-to-use. Really hard to do in one pack. But, hope, you’ll like the results.
I’ve read somewhere that it will be nice, if XSwitch will support skins. Okay… I’ll add it in the new version.

Starting from v2.0 WindowShade can MIT windows. Those windows will not be displayed in Alt-Tab window. Current version of XSwitch doesn’t reflect such windows too. So, I’ll add that functionality improvement in new version.

Full mouse support (that was a feature request)… As far we’ve got MouseTab I decide to integrate it and XSwitch. So, if you’re using MouseTab and XSwitch you can easily use your mouse to work with XSwitch. And I decided to implement “hot corners” feature in XSwitch.

Well, what else? Expose like feature? Desktop switcher? Hum… I’ll think about it…

Probably, not all of the mentioned features will be implemented in next release, but it will be done in 2007 year.
Any other ideas? Welcome to submit your ideas!

Products pages:
MouseTab
XSwitch
WindowShade

In 2004 few crazy peoples have founded new start-up company called Edge Beyond. We are a team of skilled professionals experienced in creating software for Microsoft Windows platform. The company itself is not very big (actually just few persons), yet this is not the key factor for the IT industry nowdays. The most important thing is our dedication and attention to the detail.

Edge Beyond?

Edge Beyond is the best definition we could find for our way of thinking: outside of the box, beyond the very edge of technology; ahead of the competition. Our strategy is useful software at the affordable prices, geared towards our users.

This means every time one of us has something to share, we will post it here. Of course, keep in mind that any opinions or posts expressed here do not represent the official views and opinions of our company, Edge Beyond.

We’ll see if we’ll have the guts to keep up this blog up-to-date and running. Feel free to comment on entries you find interesting.