The Lounge - CodeProject

It's funny you should ask that question, because every time I see an article about "Salesforce" I automatically think it is a recruitment company.
They could do with a bit of rebranding IMO.

Salesforce, Sharepoint, Willy Wonka Chocolate factory. All very well contrived fantasies to allure you to a 'one size fits all' idea of software. Who on earth wants to learn YOUR platform when you could just learn how to program.

I have to step on this post a bit.
We wrote a successful app for our company that really streamlined business process flows.
We grew, but it lacked lots of things, like a web interface that people could use from anywhere.

They migrated over to salesforce.com, and with some stumbling, figured it out. The company has a product they sell, and now uses salesforce.com for managing sales/contacts, etc. They have 1 programmer nowadays as the product is in maintenance mode until it dies a slow death as companies using it go out of business...

But salesforce.com was there, and is there. it works. And from a business standpoint, I would rather change my non-critical business processes to match existing (written and debugged) software to leverage that than to risk writing it from scratch.

I bet you could write a word processor, too... But why would you?

The ONLY time to write your own home grown software is when there is no software that allows you to encapsulate your business specific advantages (Special Sauce, as we call it). If you lose that, then you lose a competitive edge... Then you need either a different solution, or a different way to keep the Special Sauce alive. (We are currently bolting on a Special Sauce piece for a client who is moving the operations to a similar product. They cannot afford to maintain 40 year old Cobol code, or to rewrite it. Nor does anything have the Special Sauce. So, they will use the off the shelf product, and bolt on the Special Sauce).

Now, this is where Saleforce.com and similar models can be amazing. They let you customize their datastructures and screens. We can literally add to their system, the data we need, add a BUNCH of screens to make it operable, and have a consistent system that the reporting system works on.

This, to me, is where the industry will go. Your data will be in the cloud, your access will be everywhere, your customizations will be available, and your ability to expand will grow, without growing your IT staff by nearly the same amount. Fewer programmers, and more business analysts.

To compensate for the shortage of programmers, and also the loss of the good ones over time.

Note: this is not meant to be a "rant" ... more of a "case study" ... and I'm interested in how you react to this. I deeply appreciate the countless hours of effort that creators of open-source software (and, of course, the incredible variety of useful content that sites like CP host/nurture) !

Case in point, I posted an issue on the HandBrake (written with .NET) GitHub site about how the app is unusable on a 1360x768 screen (with some font "enlargement" enabled because of my vision problems). I noticed other similar issues reported there.

The issue was promptly closed with this reply by (I assume a principal) dev [quotes from my issue post in italics]:

Quote:
As a .NET programmer, I wonder how it's possible_ to create a Window that behaves like this.

It's not quite as trivial as you might expect, especially when you have multiple dynamically sized regions that need to both up and downscale correctly.

It's not hard, it's just tedious to get it working correctly in all situations.

1366x768 should actually be fine, but only if you run at 100% or 96dpi which I'm guessing your not.

At the end of the day, we have so few people using HandBrake on low-end hardware that it doesn't warrent me diverting any time to tweak the UI to downscale better. I already have a huge list of stuff to do that would come in front.

I suggest you put a clear message on the download page on the HB site suggesting you do not use HandBrake if, in fact, there is a requirement to have a screen res > 1366,768

Then we'd have to mention 100 other things, at which point it's no longer clear. The new documentation when it comes online in the near future will have a recommended system requirements page that details all the in's and outs but I doubt most people will bother reading it.

If I or anyone else ever gets around to replacing our installer with something more flexible, some of this can be checked before the app installs.

Too bad that such an excellent app (implements HEVC H.265 encoding) is encumbered with such a problem.

Of course, one can take the attitude that free software, and the generous people who implement it, should never be criticized. In my experience, the "attitude" shown in this reply to an issue is not typical of open-source software !

I wonder if it would be in "bad taste" to post a response to the person who replied to me at HandBrake with a link to an answer to a QA question I wrote today on this very topic: [^] ?

cheers, Bill

«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008

I don't think (s)he is displaying 'attitude' in that reply, I think it's quite polite and detailed. They've taken time to acknowledge your problem, to explain that they understand the underlying causes and to set out how it could all be addressed, but because yours is an edge case they don't have enough resources.

It's open source though, so if you know how to fix it you could do so and help others in your situation.

Regards

Nelviticus

Well, if I were the first person to ever report this problem, and it was unique to my hardware/software context, I wouldn't have any problems with the response.

But, the problem has been frequently reported, and they continue to allow new users to download their app, and find they can't use it because of screen-resize/resolution issues, and waste their time posting new issues on the GitHub site.

That I call negligence. If I were involved in this software project, I would be busy putting a simple notice up on the download page advising potential users that the software required a certain minimum resolution screen-setting to function properly. And, I would be apologizing profusely to someone who had just made me aware that there have been multiple instances of the problem reported; I would not be rather sarcastically expressing my indifference to users.

«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008

I read no "attitude" or sarcasm in the dev's reply. The telling point is:

"At the end of the day, we have so few people using HandBrake on low-end hardware that it doesn't warrent me diverting any time to tweak the UI to downscale better. I already have a huge list of stuff to do that would come in front."

If anything, the dev sounded tired.

Your problem is not high on their list of priorities. Sure, the resolution problem may have been reported 20 times ... but it affects a small subset of the users. I expect they have defects that affect the majority of the users, and the needs of the many come first.

BillWoodruff wrote:
That I call negligence. If I were involved in this software project, I would be busy putting a simple notice up on the download page advising potential users that the software required a certain minimum resolution screen-setting to function properly. And, I would be apologizing profusely to someone who had just made me aware that there have been multiple instances of the problem reported; I would not be rather sarcastically expressing my indifference to users.

Ok. Get involved. If it bothers you that much, contribute to the project and fix it.

BryanFazekas wrote:
Ok. Get involved. If it bothers you that much, contribute to the project and fix it.

This. It's how open source works. If you care enough about something, add it/fix it yourself. Otherwise you don't care enough. That might sound harsh, but it's also the harsh reality that people working in their free time only have so many resources, and have their own personal interests.

If you - someone who needs the fix - don't care enough to at least try and fix it, why should someone else, who has no need of that feature and has 100 other bugs to take care of? It's not because of attitude, but because the day only has 24 hours and you are one of a large number of users - all of whom think their personal needs are more important than some other random feature they will never use, and all of whom are lobbying the poor devs Smile | :)

So the devs have to make decisions and determine priorities. In an ideal world, every good idea would make it into the software, and every issue would be fixed. In the real world, a more pragmatic approach is needed that weighs up the benefits and effort to determine which things make it onto the To-Do list.

You say yourself, you are a programmer. Surely, you have also had to make decisions of this nature: do I spend 2 weeks trying to track down and fix a weird esoteric bug that only 2 people have experienced, or do I add a much-requested feature that will improve the experience for the vast majority of users? You can't always do both.

That's not to say I don't sympathise with you! It's a crying shame that there is generally very little awareness about how to make software more accessible. I like to assume it's not a case of people not caring, but of simply not being aware that what many of us take for granted can be a real problem for other people. For example, a green/red traffic light status indicator might not be such a good choice for the colour blind. But if you're not colour blind, it's quite a challenge to realise this could be an issue without someone pointing it out to you.

So at the end of the day, I think this is less about you and a lack of understanding of your needs, and more about cost-benefit. It's simply not worth fixing the esoteric bug when there are far more users who have other pressing needs.

Stephen McCafferty wrote:
If you - someone who needs the fix - don't care enough to at least try and fix it, why should someone else

I'm stunned that you can say such things without fainting from embarrassment.

"If you don't like the way the trains don't run on time, then why don't you fix it?"

The question that should be asked is: "If you can't handle this project, then why the *u** are you distracting us from the efforts of people who can?"

"Oh, it's free", is no excuse for bad work or bad customer relations, because the people who work on such projects really don't do it for the fabled "nothing". If they don't profit financially, they gain some other way.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

That's not what I said at all.

You've left off an important alternative, which is part of the OSS credo/manifesto/whatever: you can fix it yourself or pay someone else to do so. I'm betting the project has a PayPal button somewhere on it. If you and the 20 others who have reported this issue even threw just a few buck apiece at the project owners, it would go a long way towards prioritizing your issue. It'll also go a long way toward showing your material appreciation of what the project does for you, when it does work.

Put your money where your pixels are.

I'm going to have to agree with Bill here to an extent. Maintaining a minimum system requirements listing is hardly a huge burden.

At the same time one Winform app I maintain has known problems with DPI scaling settings other than 100%; for the last half dozenish years. Given its narrow set of end users I suspect the one internal tester we have is the only person who's been affected by it. I also suspect it'd only need at most a few days to fix: layout issuses on one form with custom resizing code and one or two custom drawn controls (not 100% sure because Win7 makes testing different DPI settings painful by forcing a logout to make the change stick). But every time we bring up potential enhancements for v.next they always decline the DPI scaling support feature in favor of other stuff.

If I didn't know how lethargic the customers IT spending was and that the hardware the app is supporting is in the process of being replaced with a final sunset date only a few years out I'd bet the issue would eventually come to a head when they tried it on a high DPI system; but as is - I suspect the app'll die before that happens.

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius

Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt

Dan Neely wrote:
I'm going to have to agree with Bill here to an extent. Maintaining a minimum system requirements listing is hardly a huge burden.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. But there are too many unknowns, like the current workload of the people involved, who manages the web site, etc. We (those not on that team) don't know what burden this really is.

The big problem with free software is that it's free. People are donating their free time to make things happen, and family and day job come first.

From my own experiences I'm honestly impressed with any open source group that publishes frequent updates. Doing something like this for a few months is not typically difficult, especially with initial enthusiasm. But after a couple of years go by? It's not so easy.

To behonest, I have to agree. There was no snark in the response. It seemed an honest attempt to explain the situation.
Who knows how busy this guy is.
I've personally had the frustrating experience of trying to get open source software projects off the ground to find that family and work often gets in the way. If he is in that situation, prioritisation is essential to get *anything* done.

I have to agree that there is no attitude in the post. One *can* certainly read it with an attitude in mind Smile | :)

However, if you *did* pick up a bit of attitude it may not have been the intention at all. This is a problem with writing things. Depending on the mood or view of the person reading it they may misinterpret it.

I also have some open-source projects going (Shuttle)[^] and I try my utmost not to offend. However, the issue may have been left open and marked as "help wanted". Any help with these things really is appreciated Smile | :)

modified 26-Jul-16 7:09am.

all this time and no one has replied. I suspect I am not alone in having a degree of sympathy for the possibly over worked and under paid person who responded to your bug report.

Rather than coming across as an attitude the response shows a degree of practicality and a sense of humour that I find refreshing.

I appreciate that you have made a very valid and reasonable point but there are many priorities when developing any software and it is usually the largest group of requesters that are given priority in any development plans

I think the fact that you have reported the problem is a good thing as it will be likely to be born in mind the next time the person is working on the UI. It is unfortunate that it isn't going to be given the priority that you would like

The same problem has been reported frequently over a long period of time. It would have taken virtually no effort for the people doing this software to put a simple notice advising downloaders about this, and saving the waste of time on the part of first-time users, not to mention the waste of their time.

Did you not understand this is open-source software, and the folks doing it are volunteers ?

Like I said, this experience is really unique in my long and happy use (and occasional contribution to) open-source software.

«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008

Please don't take offence as I certainly didn't intend any.

Your initial post said

Quote:
I noticed other similar issues reported there.

which is different to

Quote:
The same problem has been reported frequently over a long period of time

Warnings would be useful but as the dev said there may well so many that it might be difficult to see the specific one that would affect you and you may well have still gone ahead anyway

I do understand your frustration at the time you have wasted trying this software but there is always the possibility that it might have been so good that it might have been worth replacing your monitor with something that could work with it

Since it's "open source", why don't YOU volunteer to fix it ....

Bill,
I get that you have some vision issues that require a specific environment.
I have watched my co-workers ruin their vision with ultra high res screens, that they squinted at.
I avoid that. If I can't read the screen without ANY stress/tension in my eyes I use larger screens,
or bigger pixels.

The challenge we face today is the digital screen. In the analog days, they scaled better between resolutions without the pixelation.

But as a developer, I have long fought layout issues in my applications for various users who want to use large fonts. Oh, large fonts killed us. We literally had to spend a month going through hundreds of screens to make sure they sized properly because of large font settings. We had to RAISE OUR minimum requirements of the monitor size along the way.

==
I am curious. Is there any solution you can apply to your end that would allow you to work around the problem? (Having purchased well over 12 monitors for myself over the years to find the right ones for me, I understand that it takes work on my side as well)...

Do you run dual monitors already?
For example, I have a small 1024x768 monitor as my third monitor, above my other two. I have to use this because some clients have these old small screens, and when I try to do screen sharing, it sucks for them.

Do I use it every day? Nope. Does it get around the problem? Yep.

Sometimes it is better to solve the problem in a different way.

HTH,

Kirk Out!

Honestly, your use of a low resolution screen with other tweaks to make things larger on it is definitely out on the end of the bell curve. Expecting that any given user interface to work way out there is asking a lot, especially of free software.

The developer could have handled the situation better, but they've done their part in verifying that it works at 1366x768 for people with typical monitor settings.

I wouldn't bother to post a response. It may be seen as someone who is trying to get the developer to accommodate them way out on the end of the bell curve by shaming them into it, which won't be taken well. Instead, I'd investigate some virtual desktop products so I could use my monitor as a window I could pan around on a larger desktop. Such a tool would probably make many other user interfaces useable for me. When I find one, then I'd post a response about how you solved your usability problem, not directed at that developer, but directed at other users who may be in a similar situation.

We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

Speaking as a developer with limited vision, usability problems are a tremendous pain, making a great application unusable for me. That said, complaining that a free tool doesn't meet your needs and its author should 'fix' it, is...I dunno, a waste of everyone's time?

Sometimes the user can fix the problem inexpensively by just purchasing a bigger monitor, though depending on the particular vision problem, this may not work as well as the uninformed may expect. Ah, but that's paying money to use a free application.

The author even looked at the request and determined that a fix would be expensive and demand for the fix was low. Which, for accessibility problems is very often the case (sigh).

That creepy reply from HandBrake's dev came off as so-o rude. It almost seems to escalate with condescension. When will people learn to be polite firstly? Rudeness is so-o time-consuming. This is the sign of a low-end type person, and no amount of proffered aid or insight will help them to grow up.

Remain Calm & Continue To Google

What surprises me most about this thread is the clear split between people that seem to feel the dev was perfectly within his rights, and the people that think he was rude. Nobody seems to be somewhere in the middle.

First of let me say that when it comes to Open Source I agree that if a bug bothers you, or a feature is missing, it is foremost our responsibility as developers to rather assist and implement it than file a bug report about it. The issues page is for users.

But sometimes, even us developers are just users, so we want to use software without having to write it first... and that's perfectly fine too. I can't be a contributor to every open source software package I use! OMG | :OMG:

I would never be able to do anything for myself.

And that's the case with you Bill I think... in this case, you are just trying to be a user. And what happened is you got treated like a user by the developer.

As for the devs reply, I think the first part was perfectly polite and understandable. The second part is rather snarky though, and very dismissive. Perhaps it was just frustration at this issue being reported "again", or perhaps he is just an idiot. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

Sounds like they just need to enable scroll bars!

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