Re: [Audacity-devel] Are we letting it out?

[Martyn S. <mar...@go...>]

Gale Andrews wrote:
...
> 
>     | I think that labelling 'Beta' versions as 'unstable' makes people think 
>     | that they will crash their system..So why aren't we releasing what we've
>     | got, under a banner of 'latest version' rather than 'Beta warning'? 
>     | So what's holding up a release of what we've got?

...

> I agree some users are put off by our warnings on the Beta download
> pages where they would probably be happy if they used the Beta. Only last 
> week a user suggested we should take the Beta down "as it's unsafe", which 
> misses the point that we need user feedback on the Beta. Also there is user 
> frustration with no new stable release for so long. 
> 
> We say on the download pages the Beta "is more likely to crash"....
> 
> This "could" be more softly worded. For many Beta users that is probably 
> not their experience of it, whereas it is probably ours because of the way we
> use the program to test things, and then stumble across something else.    
>  
> Then we say "you are more likely to lose data". That is probably untrue
> given our Crash Recovery, though its relative unreliability on Macs remains 
> a worry.   
> 
> It's probably just as important to say that some features that worked in 
> 1.2.x may not work in 1.3.x (another reason for getting more feedback
> about it through getting more people using it). 
> 
> Looking at the period October/November 2006 to now, it seems that 
> only about 3% of Windows downloads were Beta (1.3.2+1.3.3) compared 
> to about 36% of Mac downloads being Beta.  There are good reasons 
> why Mac users may need the Beta more than Windows users (e.g. to 
> get FireWire external devices working) but this seems a considerable 
> disparity, and maybe our Beta warning really is putting Windows users
> off too much.  I'm happy to have a go redrafting that first paragraph if
> anyone thinks it's a good idea.

We should be more encouraging, I think.  Here is my redraft of the 
download page para 1:

Windows
Beta information

Audacity 1.3 Beta is a new (but not quite finished) version of Audacity. 
  This means that it has:
	Many new and finished features
	Some new features that might not be entirely 'polished'
	Some experimental features that might not make it into the next 
'stable' version
	The occasional place where we have broken what previously worked.

You can take advantage of the new features and also help the developers 
by sending us comments on them.  Reporting things that did work but now 
don't would also be very helpful.

Users who want a completely stable, finished program should be using 
Audacity 1.2.  You can install both Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 on the same 
machine, if you install them to different directories.

Audacity 1.3 is available in many languages, etc etc

Any use?
Martyn