Priacta

What does it mean when the development blog is quiet for awhile? Are the programmers soaking in sun on a Hawaiian beach, or are they chained to their desks beside a pile of pizza?

Here is the inside scoop. Over the last 3 months we’ve been working feverishly on radical changes that will make Trog Bar even faster and more flexible with a smaller memory footprint.

The Road MAP(I) and Syncing

We began to notice that our data storage system (MAPI + Outlook) was limiting Trog’s performance and our development options, including how well TaskSense does its job. It was also preventing us from adding the most requested feature: compatibility with Thunderbird and other email clients. By mid-April we were ready to launch into a new architecture.

One of our primary concerns was maintaining the real time binding with Outlook. In other words, when you make a change in the Trog Bar or Outlook, it needs to appear in the other immediately. Until now this was automatic since we stored everything in Outlook’s database. Now, however, in addition to storing data in Outlook (for Outlook to use directly) we needed a second, much faster database (for Trog Bar to use). Programmers reading this will recognize that this requires a robust synchronization system.

Syncing requires caution. If you do it wrong, you can duplicate data or worse. It can be slow enough that you don’t want to do it in real time with every little change. Even worse, the patent landscape is littered with syncing algorithms owned by big names like Microsoft. (Interestingly, they published one algorithm to the world while not mentioning that they had it patented!) One false syncing step could turn into a nightmare.

Needless to say, we moved very carefully. Still, we are pleased to announce that we have developed a safe, proprietary syncing approach that allows Trog to remain responsive. The new sync approach and database are now largely in place and very exciting.

Please, Predict the Future

1. While much of the new approach has been coded, much has yet to be tested, and the size and scope of the conversion demand careful quality assurance. Things look good, but we don’t have a projected release date yet.

2. When we do release, the first benefits will be improved performance in nearly every area. Trog will load faster, use less memory, respond faster, search faster, handle huge task lists without blinking, and do everything else faster. (Size on the hard drive will increase a bit; that is the only impact.)

3. We will be integrating Trog Bar with more tools besides Outlook. We are also expanding our coaching offerings, and a Remember the Milk version of the TRO Field Guide is nearing completion. The goal is to make Trog Bar and the TRO Self Training System available to a wider audience, including folks needing shared or online access to their tasks lists. (Don’t panic, we’re not abandoning Trog Bar! We’re actually allowing Trog Bar and TRO Self Training to embrace additional tools people already love.)

4. We’ve started a Trog Bar documentation/help project in response to user demand. This appears to be progressing quickly. We’ll be sure to announce when this is ready.

5. Usability and interface enhancements are planned to make Trog even more intuitive and stress-relieving.

6. We will, of course, fix the bugs that have been reported. Some bugs take longer than others, but as always we intend to zap them just as fast as we can hunt them down.

7. We’ve received very valuable feedback on the new Projects feature while it was in preview, and we will use what we learned to complete the feature with a dramatic boost in usability. Thank you to all who provided feedback, asked for clarification, or reported bugs!

Getting the Updates

The best way to get the updates is to get a Trog Bar Premium Registration, which includes all feature upgrades for one year.

How will you know when we release? Keep Trog Bar configured for Automatic Updates, and you’ll always get the latest changes at the right time. New features will be released in Beta mode, so anyone running in Release mode will not be affected until the Trogger community gives its final stamp of approval.

You can check your Automatic Update settings by going to Windows Start > Programs > Trog Bar > Configure Trog Bar Automatic Update. We recommend configuring it to check for updates daily.

Also, subscribe to this blog by clicking at top left for further announcements.

Stay tuned…