Why I won't be upgrading to Bibleworks 8 (not for $100+ anyway)

[MBushell]

On another note, it's really low of you to do this on a public forum on the day they release their latest version. It's actually quite sad and it causes me to question your character and intent. I think BW does not need to defend itself though. Thousands of happy customers is their evidence for a superb product.

Thanks for the words of support. We have worked very hard on this release and are very proud (in a good way) of what we have been able to pull together - and in a very stressful climate financially. Complaints aired in this way are hurtful, whether they were intended to be or not. Over the years some of our strongest critics have become our strongest supporters. I just pray that will be the case here. We will try to get to the bottom of this users complaints and address them whether he remains a user or not.
On another note, we are looking at dictionaries, systematic theologies and one or two really good commentary sets. I would like to see Lange's and McClintock and Strong in the base package if we can swing the development costs. IDB would be great as a module and we have tried but the publisher has so far refused to license it to us. I don't want to start a discussion of possible additions, but just want to let you know that we want to stretch our paradigm a little without breaking it and without becoming an electronic library. So your suggestions are possible.
Mike

[tfjern]

I have been with BibleWorks for over a decade, and there is no doubt it is one of the brightest, most trustworthy, and responsive (to customers' requests) software companies I've ever know. These are economically hard times, indeed, and I earnestly hope sales for this version will exceed all the others, sevenfold.

P.s.: It would be nice to have downloadable upgrades. That's how eager I am to get my hands on BWW 8.0.

[MBushell]

Hi All,

I did some investigating and with the help of some other users found the highlighting problem. It works like this: if you place the mouse cursor to the left of the first character and drag right, it always works properly. I think most people do it that way. Hence few people saw (or complained about) the problem. If you place the cursor in the left half of the first character AND move the cursor quickly to the right, sometimes it misses the first character. Going slowly it seems to work OK. I don't really consider this a catastrophic bug. But it needed fixing.

I am not sure if the original complainant will see this, but the problem has been fixed in 7 and posted. I'll make sure it gets in the 8 executable. I do not know why or how this never got to the programmers. Maybe the guys in the office were just highlighting in a way that always worked for them. So they didn't know what to report. Even the description of the person registering a complaint here was wrong. As described there was no problem. Maybe it was represented incorrectly to tech support. In any case, I think it is ok now. We'll fix any reproducible bug brought to our attention (or give a good reason for not doing so). If anyone has an additiona problem aling these lines please report it to tech support and tell them I said to contact me directly.

God bless,
Mike

[brian]

don't bash the original poster, this thread actually shows how much of a class act BibleWorks is...not only did they respond in the forum, they offered a refund AND fixed the bug that they were able to reproduce

that's hard to beat

...if only they offered a native mac version

[tcblack]

Indeed,
Michael has demonstrated once again grace under fire.

I will be upgrading as soon as I can eek out the change.

BW7 => BW8 Worth every penny to me.

[Harold6]

You guys are the greatest! Be not discouraged by one or two disgruntled users. I have been blessed by your product for a number of years now. I have recommended your product to all of my ministerial and seminary friends. I started with BW6, upgraded to BW7 and will upgrade to BW8 as soon as it starts shipping!

Harold Miller, Jr.

[MWMiles]

Hi All,

I did some investigating and with the help of some other users found the highlighting problem. It works like this: if you place the mouse cursor to the left of the first character and drag right, it always works properly. I think most people do it that way. Hence few people saw (or complained about) the problem. If you place the cursor in the left half of the first character AND move the cursor quickly to the right, sometimes it misses the first character. Going slowly it seems to work OK. I don't really consider this a catastrophic bug. But it needed fixing.

I am not sure if the original complainant will see this, but the problem has been fixed in 7 and posted. I'll make sure it gets in the 8 executable. I do not know why or how this never got to the programmers. Maybe the guys in the office were just highlighting in a way that always worked for them. So they didn't know what to report. Even the description of the person registering a complaint here was wrong. As described there was no problem. Maybe it was represented incorrectly to tech support. In any case, I think it is ok now. We'll fix any reproducible bug brought to our attention (or give a good reason for not doing so). If anyone has an additiona problem aling these lines please report it to tech support and tell them I said to contact me directly.

God bless,
Mike

....And they lived happily ever after. The End.



Actually, Thank YOU Michael. You're a real CAN DO type guy.

[DimBimbleby]

Before I respond to this post, I just want to mention that someone mentioned earlier that Bibleworks offers far more in the way of texts and resources for the money than Accordance does. That is absolutely true, and a great reason to choose Bibleworks over Accordance. Truly.

I did some investigating and with the help of some other users found the highlighting problem. It works like this: if you place the mouse cursor to the left of the first character and drag right, it always works properly. I think most people do it that way. Hence few people saw (or complained about) the problem. If you place the cursor in the left half of the first character AND move the cursor quickly to the right, sometimes it misses the first character. Going slowly it seems to work OK. I don't really consider this a catastrophic bug. But it needed fixing.

I am not sure if the original complainant will see this, but the problem has been fixed in 7 and posted. I'll make sure it gets in the 8 executable.

This is excellent news! I'm going to try out the updated version in just a moment. Before I do, I just want to be very clear how easy this bug is to reproduce in the versions before today. The reason this is important to me is that I want everyone to understand why I have been so disappointed—to the point of losing trust—with BW7. I know thousands of people love it. But how many people are not here on these forums praising BW because they've been sent running by bugs like this one? And this is not the only such bug. Another one is that BW constantly forgets my Hebrew accent settings, so that I have to keep going in and reminding it to show accents. Another is that it crashes fairly frequently—not nearly so frequently as it used to, but frequently enough—and when it does, it sometimes forgets all my settings so that I have to remind it that BDAG is my favorite Greek lexicon, GentiumAlt is my favorite font, what English versions I like to use, etc. etc.

I'm thrilled that the selecting text bug has been identified and fixed. (It's interesting, though, that I didn't get nearly so generous a response when I reported this bug repeatedly three years ago.) And my goal is not to destroy Bibleworks. But if BW is going to remain competitive it's going to need less Yes-men and more aggressive testing, bug reporting, and fixing.

If you still think that comment is unfair, just try this. I want you to see that this bug is nothing like unusual or difficult to reproduce. Or maybe it is—try it on your system and let's see.

Open up, say, 1 Cor 2:6 in the NAU version. Frankly, any verse or version will work, but I want to make sure we're all seeing the same thing (or not). The text says, "Yet we do speak wisdom..." Now, place your mouse cursor so that it's right in the center of the 'w' in "wisdom." Hold down the LMB. You will notice that the text caret flashes just to the left of the 'w'. Now drag as slowly as you want to the right. You will select "isdom" but not the 'w'. That's a bug, and it causes me constantly to lose text when I copy and paste.

It doesn't just happen if you click in the center of letter, either. It will happen from anywhere in the letter, but the faster you drag the more text you'll skip. You can end up selecting just "om" out of wisdom if you drag fast enough.

I'm thrilled this has been fixed in the new update and in version 8. I'm thrilled that all of my fellow posters have never experienced this bug. But you can bet that thousands of users or potential users have experienced it. And when a program that is all about text fails to deal with text selection correctly, it's not a little bug. It's a worrisome bug, and it affects trust for the program. That's my point.

If Bibleworks want to continue to appeal to Bibleworks fans, ignore my ranting. If you want to appeal to a broader user base... well, don't.

I very much appreciate the offer of a refund. I will consider it. But there's a larger point here than my personal satisfaction. I truly am trying to help you see how you can be more competitive. Bibleworks has many, many things going for it, and I want to see it thrive. If you not only fix this bug, but recognize what it means for your overall bug reporting/fixing process, then I won't have to take a refund because you'll have won my trust again.

Two concrete suggestions:

(1) Put together a Bugzilla (or similar) database to make bug reporting and tracking public and immediate.

(2) Even better: make Bibleworks open source. Frankly—I'll be real frank—there's nothing algorithmic happening in Bibleworks that you should need to keep proprietary. Your real commodities are the indexed databases. Keep your data proprietary but expose your UI code to the world, and the thousand Bibleworks geeks out here (who love command lines and therefore probably have a high average level of code savvy) will fix bugs and add features like nobody's ever seen.

[BigJayOneill]

BibleWorks =

[DimBimbleby]

Huzzah! The text selection bug is fixed in the latest update to BW7. Boy that is a big improvement. I'm clicking-and-dragging all over the place like a kid on a pond that's just frozen over.