Afternoon folks!  Another update and this one is a big honking bag of bugfixes (and status on bugs I was unable to duplicate), among other things.  Without further ado, here's the skinny:

• In the sweeps list and the bookmarks list it was possible for the bookmark and notify buttons to be enabled when a contest was expired.  They should appropriately show as disabled from here on.
• When a contest is expired, or has not yet started the date in the listing will be highlighted in red to hopefully catch your attention if your current search is showing expired contests.
• Went over SweepsUnleashed with a fine-toothed comb, there were two reports.  First was that there are times when there would always be 1(or more) contests that would stay in the Unleashed batch.  This one threw me for a loop for a bit but it turns out that it's when there is a contest with unlimited entries it adds it back to unleashed every time it's started.  This is appropriate behavior.  The second issue was that Unleashed was freezing at the end of a run.  I ran it probably 100 times and was not able to duplicate this.
• The Next and End pager controls on all lists pages were starting off showing as disabled (though they actually worked).  This has been corrected and all paging controls seem to function correctly now.
• There was a bug when trying to remove a bookmark from your bookmark list.  This has been fixed and you can now remove bookmarks again.
• The Home option in the top navigation will no longer be highlighted when in the SMS
• The position of the status bar (where status messages are displayed in the SMS) was off when using different resolutions.  This has been corrected and the bar should always look as intended.
• The URL for the SMS has changed.  If you had any deep links directly to the SMS they will no long function.  FYI, it is NOT recommended to bookmark pages within the SMS as they may change at any time and you get bounced back to the main site to log in anyway.
• There was a report that in the notification emails the "Last Entered" information wasn't updated correctly and always said "Never".   I was unable to duplicate this and closed the ticket.
• Had a tickets regarding errors in beta applications.  I was unable to duplicate this but it may have very well been solved with some earlier changes to the system.
• I'd filed a ticket about an error when entering contests through bookmark notifications.  I believe this was corrected with the authentication rewrite.

If I said I couldn't duplicate something and you can, please do let us know so maybe you could help us out.  If I can't duplicate it, I can't fix it.

As always we appreciate your bug reports and feedback, please keep 'em coming and feel free to even ramp it up and nit-pick us (please).

Next up for 1.0b.005 release are some highly requested items.  It will begin storing preferences for sorting and searches among other things and bookmarks and notifications are getting a LOT of love.  Going to be barely recognizable when it's finished.

Thanks!

Gerald

• Can not remove bookmarks currently, generates an error.
• Home option of top menu stays highlighted when in the Sweeps and Contests area.
• and more.

Next update will have a bunch of minor bugfixes then will attack bookmarks, notifications, and entering contests with a VENGEANCE!

As always we value your feedback on problems you have and thinks you like and dislike.  Please keep the information flowing to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Gerald

So, let's talk about what's changed. Yeah yeah, aside from everything.  Let's get specific on some important points.

Look and feel:   Updated our color scheme and graphics.  Hopefully provides both a more professional and pleasing aesthetic.  This should be a lot better especially for the forums and blog.

Navigation:  Has been re-thought-out from the ground up.  We looked at how we could categorize certain types of information that really didn't belong on the top level and add other important topics.  Now it's not just a bunch of junk crammed on one line.  The top navigation works in concert with a left-side navigation site-wide with the top being general and the left-side navigation offering specific options.

Sweeps Management System:  Completely overhauled with new look and feel.  Migrating towards a more icon based approach to interacting with the system with hopefully very intuitive and attractive icons.  We are not and will never be satisfied with the speed of the SMS and continue to find ways of optimizing the system and the interface where possible.  I think you'll find some nice surprises in this regard as you get back into the system.  There are many more optimizations coming.

So there's a touch on the biggies.  Of course, as you find problems or have questions and comments, please do let us know.  We are always interested.

Speaking of feedback, we did get feedback on some aspects of the new site from some folks earlier on.  Some of you may not see your changes implemented yet.  Honestly, I just ran out of time trying to get everything put together and there are plenty more (minor) changes coming over the next few weeks.  We haven't ignored you, I promise.

So here we are, looking better and living large.  One has to ask, "What's next?".

We are looking at late June for launch at the moment.  Here's a quick list of items we are wanting to complete by then:

• Implement saved preferences for interface items and list sorting.
• Implement geographical eligibility requirements that allow for filtering lists based on content eligibility locations. 
• Quick Ending calendars for picking a date on a graphical calendar and seeing contests that end on that day.
• Have the ability to print or email a PDF newsletter (like old-school paper newsletters) based on current search criteria (and in the future saved search criteria)
• Implement billing and subscription system. . .hey, we all gotta eat.

There are tons more things in the pipe but that's the goals we have to wrap up beta and move into production.

As always we appreciate you guys helping us out and continuing to provide us feedback and bug reports.  If you have any comments or questions please comment on this blog post or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

• Reworked authentication again.  Hopefully there is nothing you should notice on your side except a few less problems.  I do have a BIG favor to ask though. . .Please let us know if you see ANY weird problems with authentication (logging in/out) or authorization (permission denied, no access).  This is very complex code that, again, interacts with multiple applications and the best testing I can do is have you guys pound on it.  If you do see a problem please send us an email to support with the date and time, and what you saw that wasn't right.  This includes entering from bookmark notifications, logged in when you shouldn't be, logged out when you shouldn't be, access errors, unknown errors, etc.
• Went deep into the workings of how the listing functions work including sorting, bookmarking, unbookmarking, etc.  For those of you that are fairly recent (may have been since alpha even) the bookmarking and such hasn't actually worked correctly.  By design as soon as you bookmark a sweep/contest it should be immediately removed from the list unless you have Include Bookmarks checked.  It's not been working that way for awhile but should be working as designed now.
• There should no longer be any paging or sorting issues in the lists.  This includes losing sorting after paging.
• Paging works pretty much like it always has.  At some point I'll revisit this, but at the moment there's not a much better solution off the top.  What will happen is when you page it will immediately scroll you to the top of the page then load the new data (see the blue "spinner" at the top for working/idle status).  If you find that this isn't working for you, please let me know with what operating system (Windows XP, Windows 7, Vista, Mac OS X, etc) and what browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc) you are using so I can attempt to troubleshoot it.

Hopefully that wasn't too verbose.  As always thank those of you that reported and helped diagnose these issues.  If you'll keep up the good work, we'll keep up our end!

Gerald

Evening folks.  Well, black Friday really did turn out to be black for us here at SweepsU.com.  The update we released had a number of unintended side effects (read: bugs).  I think I've got just about everything squished so if you find something that disagrees with this posting, please do let us know ASAP via replying to this blog entry, the forums or community messaging (real live support email address coming this week or so, just need to train folks on ticket system).  Anyway, here's the skinny:

• The new paging system was flawed.  This caused problem with the page selector dropdown, and the items per page dropdown not working.  This also caused problems with bookmarking such that it would send you back to page one of the sweeps list and had a chance of bookmarking something other than what you clicked (usually the first entry on the first page).  Check your bookmarks, make sure you've bookmarked what you intended over the last 4 days.  I've reverted to the old paging system and all of these problems should be fixed.
• There were problems with the new authentication system where by it was slow getting authenticated from time to time.  This could also cause entering a contest from a bookmark notification to fail.  It was very rare, but happened a few times.

I think that covers everything I've heard about or noticed myself over the last couple days.  If you do see something else, or see one of the above still broken, please let us know.

Thanks!

Gerald

Wow, what an update.  Think this may be the best one since we've had testers.   It started out as doing some minor easy tweaks to the paging functionality on the sweeps list page and just kind of kept coming.  Click Read More  the short list:

• Pager and Items/Page selector now at top and bottom of  list pages (sweeps/bookmarks)
• Pager and Items/Page should always return you to the top of the page for update
• There should be no more problems with popup blockers. . .at all.
• Some look and feel changes, looks a little cleaner, little more consistent, etc.
• A few other things I think I'll let you be pleasantly surprised with.

As this is a significant change, it would be very nice to hear what you guys like and/or don't like about it.  Please comment to this posting, or post in the (new) forums.

Finally, there were a lot of very complicated changes involved in these changes.  I've tested them for a couple hours and think we're in pretty good shape.  However, it wouldn't surprise me if you guys are able to flush out a few things I didn't find.  As testers, we'd certainly appreciate you guys letting us know when you find a problem.  Just post in the Tester Problems forum.

Thanks folks, enjoy!  Let us know what you think!

Gerald & Gwen

I know that as a software developer I often work off of a vocabulary that isn't familiar to folks that aren't in my line of work (lucky, lucky folks) and though I try to minimize this, it still happens from time to time.  One of the things I'm bad about is speaking casually about the software development cycle.  This is the process by which software is designed, implemented, tested, and released.  There are a lot of formal definitions out there if you're interested, but as project with a single designer, engineer, tester, and product manager, the formal definition becomes much more of a rough guideline than a reality.

Specifically we throw the words "alpha test" and "beta test" around quite a bit.   Here's a nickel definition of each:

• Alpha Test:  Alpha testing is the first phase of software testing usually by in-house testers, developers, and users.  On occasion outside people are brought in, but the application is by no means complete from a feature perspective, stable, or even working at all.  The purpose of alpha testing is to find serious errors and other bugs in the application.
• Beta Test:  Beta testing is the second round of testing often including an increasingly large group of actual users to determine how usable the application will be to real consumers.  The application is generally somewhat feature complete and reasonably stable but can still have features lacking, have significant errors and stability issues.  The purpose of beta testing is to solicit feedback on application functionality and features while having errors and other problems reported back to the developers.

Those are my personal definitions, but I think they'll hold up pretty well against the more formal definitions out there.

Right now we're calling you newer folks Beta Testers.  In reality, we're probably somewhere closer to in-between; not quite alpha and not quite beta.  There are still a number of launch required features that will be added before we go into production, the interface is still clunky, performance a little too slow, etc.  In general not quite what I would personally consider beta level.  However, even as such we are still on par with our peers from a functionality standpoint and Gwen and I are both very excited to get this thing in front of people and get feedback on what they like, don't like, think is broken, etc.  So maybe we're moving a little fast with what we're calling things, but we are really using your feedback to try and build a better, more personal application.   We really are taking your feedback and using it as we plan the future direction of SweepsU.com.

Now that all this is said there are two reasons I wanted to say it.  The first is that even though we're offering use of the product for free, we do desire your participation in the discussion; we WANT to hear what you like, don't like, about errors you've found, etc and I think we've been very good so far in being responsive.  The second reason is that I am beginning to feel as though some folks are becoming frustrated.  I think this is primarily due to a misunderstanding about where we are in the process.  That we are testing an application that we KNOW isn't finished, doesn't work 100%, isn't pretty, etc.

Hopefully that helps clarify things just a little bit.   This is a part of our business that is both frustrating from time to time and extremely rewarding the rest of it.  It is really and truly fun to see you guys using the application, responding to us in the forums and blogs, and helpful when you let us know that something isn't quite right or comment on features and aesthetics.

If you have any questions or comments about this (or anything else ; )  please do leave a comment to this post or in the forums and we'll be happy to continue the discussion.

Thanks!

Gerald