YENCO.COM News

More import improvements

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:24:00 -0400

Agenda 4.0.2 has been released. This update makes further improvements and fixes to the iCal import feature based on user feedback. My thanks to everyone that has taken the time to send in questions, comments, suggestions and bug reports. Your feedback has been a tremendous help in quickly tracking down and correcting issues.

Time for an update

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0400

Agenda 4 is the biggest product release in YENCO.COM history. My thanks to everyone that has already taken the time to try it out and sent in feedback and supported YENCO.COM with registration code purchases since its release on Monday. I greatly appreciate your support and your overwhelmingly positive comments.

Still, with a brand new project the size and scope of Agenda 4 which encompasses so many new features there are bound to be some issues that will turn up over time. YENCO.COM is committed to resolving them as quickly as possible. To that end, I'm very happy to announce that Agenda 4.0.1 is now available. If you are already trying out, or have purchased Agenda 4, you can use the software update feature in the application to download and install the new version. If not, the update can be found here.

Agenda 4.0.1 includes fixes and improvements when exporting to and importing from iCal files and also fixes a character encoding issue in the iEvents feature when building or previewing a calendar or journal website. This update is also built on top of our latest version of the YENCO.COM application framework.

Framework fix

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:25:00 -0400

The YENCO.COM Framework has been updated to version 2.0.2 to correct an issue that was reported by a new Magic Dice user (thanks).

When we added the ability for verifying multiple codes (so both Agenda 3 and iEvents 2 users could get the upgrade offer on Agenda 4) we inadvertently broke single code verification.

The Magic Dice update built on Framework 2.0.2 is available now through our built-in software update feature. Since this framework issue does not affect Agenda 4, we are not releasing an update for that today, however the next update of Agenda will also be built on the new framework to keep everything consistent. Other application upgrades we have in the works have been updated as well.

Stucturally sound

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0400

The idea was simple enough. Pick the perfect location, put the latest rock-solid foundation of SuperCard on top of it, and then build a framework on top of that to support our next generation of products.

It is an idea that we came up with back in July 2005. An idea that was turned into reality by November 2005. And then promptly shook apart in January 2006 when there was a seismic shift from PowerPC to Intel chips. Finally in March 2007 we finished the new and improved framework.

So how's it holding up?

Quite well actually. Nothing is perfect and we did have to make around 50 adjustments while we were working on the major upgrade announced today, but they were all relatively minor things. In all the key supporting areas, the YENCO.COM Framework met, or in a couple cases even exceeded our expectations.

Rolling on

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0400

With all the news today focusing on the major product upgrade announcements here at YENCO.COM, we'd like to point out that Magic Dice also received an update today. The new version is built on the latest YENCO.COM Framework and includes minor fixes and enhancements of its own including improved game performance on older PowerPC G3 and G4 Macs, the game window fading out to 80% opacity when not active, and fixing a text redraw issue after rolling the dice.

It's about time!

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Major product upgrade announcements today! Click here for the product introduction.

Right back to where we started from (sort of)

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:16:04 -0400

It's hard to believe that it has been over a year since the last YENCO.COM news update. The last time you heard from us, we had just finished up our YENCO.COM 2.0 application, our Framework project was complete, Magic Dice had been released, and work had just begun on major upgrades to all our previous applications. Yes, we were very excited and all set to roll out some really amazing new PowerPC-based applications in the first half of 2006. And then Apple changed everything by releasing their first Intel-based Macs a whole six months early, and cutting their entire transition timeline down from two years to less than one year. In that moment, our plans had to change. We're not blaming Apple, this move was necessary and very good for them, unfortunately the way it worked out, the timing was not-quite-so-good for us.

So, here we are, over a year later. We have just finished up YENCO.COM 3.0, Framework 2.0, and Magic Dice 1.5 is now available for download. Work is starting on major upgrades to all our previous applications. Yes, we are right back to where we started from... or are we? What a difference a year makes. First, and most importantly, all of these new developments are completely Universal to offer native performance on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs! But we didn't stop there...

We refined our YENCO.COM application with over 80 enhancements to better manage our business. Framework 2.0 has over 50 significant improvements over the previous version which provide an even stronger support structure and great new features for our next generation of applications. Beyond the improvements that any application built on top of Framework automatically gets, Magic Dice 1.5 picked up over 30 of its own!

This past year has been rather long, frequently stressful, and full of challenges, but now YENCO.COM is back, and better than ever before. Stay tuned for more exciting news in the months ahead!

Rosetta repair

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:16:04 -0500

Shortly after we posted the news item last month about benchmarks running Magic Dice on an Intel Core Duo based Mac vs. an iMac G5, we received some followup feedback from the MacBook Pro owner pointing out an issue in Magic Dice running under Rosetta. All graphics in the application were displayed with solid white rectangles behind them rather than smoothly masked to the background as they appear on PowerPC-based Macs. Thanks to this information and our friends at Solutions Etcetera we now have a fix for this issue which has been built into the latest version of Framework and Magic Dice. This fix has resolved all issues we are currently aware of specifically related to running our software on Intel-based Macs. If anyone finds any further issues with our software running under Rosetta, please let us know.

Fixes and improvements

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:15:59 -0500

Our invitation last month for Magic Dice users to try out the built-in benchmarks for themselves to see how their results compared to our MacBook Pro vs. iMac G5 comparison turned up another interesting bug in our application framework. A couple of users sent us feedback that showed their attempts to search for the word "shareware" as we had done, but that search turned up no results for them while in our tests, 3 matching items were quickly found in the help system. After some additional communication with the users, we discovered this was due to an issue with accented and/or option characters in the path they were running the application from. The latest versions of Framework and Magic Dice fix this issue.

We also had a few people send us a copy of their usage logs with benchmark info via the built-in feedback interface in Magic Dice... but they neglected to mention what processor they were running Magic Dice on (and didn't provide any email address for us to contact them). So while we were poking around inside Framework, we also added a brand new function to record the processor type and speed to the usage log. To round off our usage log improvements we also decided to record the underlying foundation and Framework version and build data.

Finally, we updated some older resources in Framework and in Magic Dice we improved some of the usage log reporting during game play and activated a benchmark for the time it takes to display score options after each roll of the dice.

Intel indicators

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:50:51 -0500

At the end of last month we mentioned that we would love to hear from anyone out there with a new Intel Mac who has tried out our software. One of our users with a shiny new 2 GHz MacBook Pro was kind enough to run Magic Dice on his new system and send us the usage log. Thanks to the built-in benchmarking in framework we now have some data on how our current non-universal applications compare on the new Macs running under Rosetta vs. running natively on a 2 GHz PowerPC based iMac G5.

We started by comparing the time it takes Magic Dice to launch. This is broken down into two values. The first is the time it takes for the framework startup processes to complete. On the iMac G5 this happens in approximately 2.31 seconds. On the MacBook Pro it happens in approximately 3.54 seconds. The second is the time it takes for the application-specific setup to complete. On the iMac G5 this takes about 0.23 seconds, on the MacBook Pro about 1.37 seconds.

So all in all a 1.23 second difference on the framework startup and 1.14 seconds on the application-specific setup for a combined total of 2.37 seconds. While only Magic Dice is currently built on framework and can provide such data, it is likely that there is a similar difference for our other applications as well.

Next we moved on to the help system. First we compared how long it takes for the help window to open and display the help topics. The iMac G5 handles this in just 0.05 seconds. The MacBook Pro isn't far behind at 0.06 seconds. Then we decided to compare how long it would take to search the help content for the word "shareware". Remember, the help system in framework searches as you type. For this reason we'll show the individual results of the search of each character that was typed as well as the combined total. On the iMac G5 the results were: 0.09, 0.06, 0.04, 0.04, 0.03, 0.05, 0.03, 0.03 and 0.04 for a combined total of 0.41 seconds. On the MacBook Pro the results were: 0.10, 0.09, 0.09, 0.08, 0.08, 0.08, 0.09, 0.07, and 0.07 for a combined total of 1.15 seconds. Finally, we closed the search and waited for it to display the full list of help topics again. On the iMac G5 this takes 0.03 seconds. On the MacBook Pro it takes 0.05 seconds.

Overall, we're pretty impressed with the speed of our applications in Rosetta on the Intel Mac based on these results. Of course, your mileage may vary. Even in our own tests here we found minor variations of the iMac G5 results if we launched the application a few more times and opened help and ran the same search. The above is simply provided to offer a general sense of what new Intel Mac users can expect to see as a speed difference in our current applications. If you have a different Mac and want to see how these results compare to your machine, you can download a copy of Magic Dice, open up the Mac OS X console utility, and then launch Magic Dice and find out for yourself.

Odds and ends

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:42:24 -0500

Some new developments have transpired since our last news update that we thought you might like to know about. The YENCO.COM site has been updated to use standards-compliant XHTML now that an issue with our feedback section has been resolved.

Our YENCO.COM application has been updated. The interface has been streamlined a bit more in the new version to improve our workflow, the RSS module has been updated to correct an issue we discovered when trying to make multiple postings on the same day, a checklist has been added to ensure that we don't miss any important steps when attaching application-specific code on top of framework, and some minor changes were made to properly handle new pricing policies at Kagi.

Finally, there has been some great news on the Intel Mac front. Yesterday Solutions Etcetera officially announced that a Universal binary version of SuperCard has been in development since the WWDC in June 2005 and is on track for release in the second quarter of this year. They also pointed out that SuperCard appears to perform quite well under Rosetta. We don't have the resources right now to buy a new Mac, but if anyone out there has purchased one of the new Intel Macs and tried out our current software, we would love to hear from you.

New year, new site

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:51:42 -0500

The new YENCO.COM site is now up and running. This new build of the site was created with Freeway 4 Pro and uses standards-compliant HTML 4.01 and CSS. While we were in the process of upgrading the site we also took the time to make some other improvements. The pages for the current versions of all our non-framework-based applications have been consolidated into a single section. All pages on this site should now print better than in the past and also work rather well with the "Mail Contents of This Page" feature in Safari in case you want to share information about our products with your Mac-using friends and colleagues.

Waiting for the dust to settle

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:51:35 -0500

By now you've probably heard about the new Intel Core Duo Macs and maybe you're wondering when YENCO.COM is going to have some nice Universal binaries of our applications ready. The short answer is, we're not sure exactly. The longer answer is that all our applications are created using SuperCard and a universal build of this tool has not yet been released. We have every intention of updating our Framework-based apps to work natively when the tools become available. Meanwhile we continue to work on our next generation of applications.

Nine for nothing

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:51:25 -0500

With the new year upon us, we are offering one final gift exclusively to any Mac OS 9 users still out there looking for some great software. You can now register our last products that will run under Mac OS 9 for free. Simply enter "Nine for Nothing" as the registration code. Mac OS 9 users who paid for a registration code will be eligible for any upgrade offers that may be available should they move to Mac OS X and wish to acquire a newer version (so hold on to your registration codes). Anyone using the free code will not be eligible for such offers.

Happy holidays

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 14:08:08 -0500

It's that time of year again. Around here that means it is time to edit last year's holiday video footage in iMovie to show to visiting friends and relatives. It means doing some Christmas shopping and wrapping up gifts. And it means sending out our annual online holiday card.

The development news section might be a bit quiet this month with all that is going on, so here's a little wrap-up of where we are to tide you over until our next posting. The new Archive 6 user interface is progressing. There are a lot of exciting possibilities open to us now that we are focusing exclusively on Mac OS X development. Recent improvements in SuperCard and our new Framework have also greatly expanded our options. It's just going to take some time to work through them to deliver the best user experience. We think it will be worth the wait.

In other news, we also spent some time over the last few weeks researching some very promising technologies that might be used in a future version of Agenda.

The next step

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:56:35 -0500

As mentioned before, Framework is designed to handle tasks common to all YENCO.COM products and get us quickly working on core application-specific features. Today we put that to the test and the results are fantastic. With just a few setting changes to a copy of Framework we now have a fully functional starting point for Archive 6. More information will be posted in coming days as we work on building a brand new interface for Archive.

Updates

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:15:39 -0500

One of the goals we had with Magic Dice was to get a product out to the public based on our new application framework to get reactions and help detect any weaknesses. We have had a great response to Magic Dice and some excellent feedback, and yes, a few bug reports. In the process of tracking down the issues and fixing them, we also discovered a couple problems in our YENCO.COM application.

So after updating the YENCO.COM application to version 2.0.4 to correct the problems, we started to hunt for bugs. The first task was separating out the bug reports into those related to framework and those related to Magic Dice. This was rather easy thanks to the usage logs some users were kind enough to send in with their feedback.

Framework has now been updated to version 1.0.1. We fixed an issue so when switching from one scrolling help topic to another, the scroll bar will now scroll back up to the top. We also corrected an issue where the Edit menu would not properly disable when clicking outside the help search field or closing the help window. Finally, we updated the bridge between framework and the application-specific code to make it more efficient.

Magic Dice has also been updated to version 1.0.1. This was the first big test of simply taking a new copy of Framework and moving the application specific code on top of it. From what we can tell that process worked flawlessly. So Magic Dice 1.0.1 now contains all the changes in framework plus we also improved the dice value fade-in transition time, added a trap to prevent a double-click on the "Roll" button, fixed an issue which erroneously displayed a crash report when launching Magic Dice, and fixed an issue of the processor usage spiking when the game window was open.

If you already have a copy of Magic Dice 1.0.0, you can update to the new version by selecting "Check for update" from the Magic Dice menu.

We've been framed

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:04:24 -0500

Just a little over four months ago, YENCO.COM started work on building the future. We picked the perfect location, put the rock-solid foundation of SuperCard on top of it, and then started erecting a brand new framework on top of that to support our next generation of products. We are very happy to announce today that Framework 1.0 is done. To celebrate this achievement, we have launched a brand new information page for Framework on the YENCO.COM site where you can see a summary of its key features.

While we were in such a festive mood, we also created an information page for our recently updated YENCO.COM application which has been tremendously helpful in managing our business during this extremely busy time.

With framework complete, we can now move on to our final development phase to build application-specific features on top of it and release some really great shareware products. In fact, we already have...

Today YENCO.COM is releasing a brand new application. Magic Dice is a fun game that started life as a testing ground for how various components in Framework would communicate with application-specific code in our new products, but it turned out so well that we decided to polish it up a bit and release it to the public. So please check it out. We hope you enjoy it and we look forward to your support and feedback.

Lending a helping hand

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:42:44 -0400

The new help interface in Framework is done and it is fast! In our testing here the help window opens and displays contents in approximately .04 seconds! Help topics are now organized and displayed as questions in an easy to navigate content list, but we didn't stop there. We've also include a search-as-you-type field to quickly find the information you are looking for. What do we mean by "quickly"? We started to type "shareware". The "s" was found and results displayed in .21 seconds. From that point, the search time dropped dramatically to an average of about .03 seconds for each additional character. If you still can't find an answer to your question after browsing or searching, we've included a "Feedback" icon right in the help window toolbar so you can contact YENCO.COM for an answer.

The new management team

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:50:00 -0400

Back on April 14, 2003, largely unnoticed by the press and our users, we released YENCO.COM 1.0.0. No, not the website, the application. It is not surprising that it didn't get much public reaction, since this was not a public release but rather a custom-built tool to help out with the day-to-day operations here at YENCO.COM. Essentially, the application was our management team keeping track of customers, feedback, press releases, projects, sales and more! It worked rather well for us but was recently having some trouble keeping pace with various changes here at YENCO.COM including our latest development efforts.

Don't panic

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 11:00:00 -0400

Wow! Is it September already? Yikes. I suppose you were starting to worry that we fell off the face of the Earth or something. Don't panic. We are still here and working very hard on building the future. All the framework-related help content has now been written. The new help system is coming along very nicely, but has hit a slight delay while we wait for some third-party list management code (we are told that it will be done soon). In the meantime, we fixed a couple of bugs we found in framework that had been... er... well... bugging us and upgraded the YENCO.COM site with a more refined look. Let us know what you think of it.

All the options

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 22:02:12 -0400

The new Framework preference code and interface is done bringing us one step closer to the next development phase. The preference code now provides a centralized structure for handling the reading and writing of preference data. We also simplified things in the code by storing all the data exclusively in the Mac OS X based .plist file and doing away with the Mac OS 9 legacy "Prefs" file still found in our current line of applications.

Up-to-date

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:00:00 -0400

We should really take vacations more often. Talk about a productivity boost. The complete software update feature of Framework, including downloading and automatic installation, is now done and tested... and it's only Wednesday (beating our original "end of this week" estimate). The .dmg format we were originally using has been dropped due to an issue with Apple's newer Mac OS X releases that prevented our automatic installation code from working. Our thanks go out to all the users who reported the issue to us after running the download & install in our current applications. The next generation of YENCO.COM apps will be distributed in the .zip format which works much better for our purposes.

We're back

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:30:00 -0400

This is a quick note to let everyone know that we have returned from a very relaxing vacation and are back to work on Framework. The new software update check routines are now in place and seem to be functioning properly in our tests. We were very nearly finished this before we left, but we didn't want to rush through things and introduce sloppy code or new bugs. Over the next few days we'll be experimenting with a new download & install feature and can hopefully wrap up the entire automatic software update feature by the end of this week.

Facilitating feedback

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 13:00:00 -0400

As previously mentioned, in the event that any of our next generation of applications unexpectedly quit or need to be forced to quit, the new framework will display a crash report window complete with the previous usage log the next time you launch. Of course, the first step to fixing any problem is knowing that there is a problem, and so the crash report has a "Send to YENCO.COM..." button. The hope is that, once the feedback is sent in, we will be able to follow the same steps in the usage log to duplicate the issue, because the second step to fixing the problem is to be able to see it in action so we can figure out what is going on and then work out how to solve it. But what if the issue you run into doesn't result in an unexpected quit or require a force quit? What if you want to send some other type of feedback? Perhaps a feature suggestion? Perhaps a comment? Perhaps a question?

Lets get it started

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:20:00 -0400

There is still a lot of work ahead, but today YENCO.COM made the first application build of the framework code to test out the new startup process which is now mostly feature complete. This is a very important milestone in our framework development efforts and a very big deal as this is the first process that every user running our next generation of applications will see. So far the initial test results have been outstanding. What can you expect to see?

Registration redux

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 12:30:00 -0400

Just when we thought this topic was finished, we discovered an issue with our registration code system. It turns out there was a bug in our current line of applications which could result in valid registration codes being refused by the applications if the YENCO.COM site happened to be down (as it was a bit this weekend due to a server problem at our web host). Fortunately the issue actually was duplicated in the new framework. I say fortunately because with our new checkpoints in place we were quickly able to find the bump in the road and repair it with a couple of modifications.

Registration system upgrade

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:30:00 -0400

YENCO.COM is a small shareware company with very limited resources where, not only does every registration help to ensure that our products continue to be improved, but more importantly that YENCO.COM remains in business to work on those improvements. The majority of our users are honest, decent people who understand this and have done their part to help support our efforts. To them, we say a big "Thank you". Unfortunately that majority is not 100%.

Who let the bugs out?

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 11:30:00 -0400

While YENCO.COM strives to make our software bug free, it never seems to fail that sooner or later one or two of these nasty critters gets into the code and causes havoc. Typically when this happens, a user is kind enough to send us feedback with a comment like: "It doesn't work". While that may be a true statement, it hardly helps in our quest to seek, locate and exterminate the bug. Some Mac OS X users in the past have also tried to be helpful by sending along a copy of the crash log that pops up when an application unexpectedly quits. Unfortunately this rarely helps us because Mac OS X is interacting more with the SuperCard foundation sitting directly on top of it rather than our code sitting on top of that foundation and so what is returned is typically very low-level cryptic data and 99.9% of the time it is something in our code rather than SuperCard that is at fault. So that is when we start playing a game of 20 Questions with the user and hope that we ask the right question that will help isolate the problem.

Building the future

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:30:00 -0400

It's official. YENCO.COM is dropping Mac OS 9 support from our applications going forward. For one thing, the percentage of active users running our applications under Mac OS 9 is growing smaller every day as more and more users make the switch to Mac OS X (see chart below). But more importantly, building on top of Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X is a bit like constructing a building on a fault line. While originally the two halves were rather level, the Mac OS 9 side has been constantly subsiding for the last 5 years and will continue to do so. The rock-solid foundation of SuperCard continues to hold up, but unfortunately the kind of applications YENCO.COM builds on top of that foundation are doing a bit of a balancing act. Recently this has become more of a problem as implementing several user requested features would simply topple the structure like a poorly played game of Jenga. So, as you can see in the graphic at the top of this page, we are moving on. "X" marks the perfect spot for our starting point with a myriad of fantastic technologies.