I couldn't agree more! This is very aggravating not only for developers but users also. We (as developers) get flooded with emails from upset users and things break way to often and get addressed way to late. Plus watching our user count plummet when things frequently break.
Too much of our precious and valuable time is spent trying to address user complaints and debug gadgets issues (while our concerns are ignored), when our time should (and could) be spent on other things and the ROI is usually not worth it. Additionally, we can't deploy a fix as only some users are affected and trying to debug issues when you don't see them is even worse, yet the user complaints indicate there is definitely an issue there. Was this not the whole point of the sandbox? To test things first before pushing it live to the production version? Plus, this topic of some notice first has come up so many times yet we are always left hanging in the dark and dealing with issues. As mentioned above this is more or a novelty toy (playpen) then a real platform us developers can take seriously and depend on. If we did this with our sites and apps we would be laughed out of existence and our credibility as a developer seriously questioned. Come on Google help us here, it is hard to support a platform and API that continually does this to it's devoted developers. Regards, Vision Jinx On Jun 11, 8:18 am, Matt Kruse <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jun 11, 2:55 am, String <[email protected]> wrote: > > > There's a real feeling of abandonment on the forum, that Google has > > broken our gadgets in the production environment - with no warning > > before the fact, and next-to-no feedback from official channels after > > the fact. > > Indeed, it is extremely frustrating. But this has been the pattern of > iGoogle development all along, I guess it's just how it works. > > It seems like these things are so badly planned. Some points: > > 1) Some warning of big changes like this would be nice. Even just a > post in here. > > 2) Give developers the chance to opt-in to a beta testing program with > their gadgets first! > > 3) Seemingly applying the new rendering code at random is the worst > idea! Half my gadgets break, half don't. Some break for me, but not > others. I have no way of knowing why, because I didn't even know that > the v2 was in place. I can't change my gadget code because not every > user is seeing the v2 changes. This kind of random roll-out of changes > just seems terrible. > > 4) When you break functionality, please fix it ASAP! Do you know that > us developers start getting emails from annoyed users when you break > our gadgets in production? It's such a hassle. It takes time away from > me. > > 5) Please do better testing. I can't believe that simple functionality > like _toggle() was broken. > > 7) When problems are pointed out, please give us the chance to revert > gadgets back to the old renderer, rather than just continuing to have > a broken gadgets for days or weeks. > > 8) For some of us, iGoogle is the hub of our information feed from the > web. When it breaks, it's quite frustrating. When we continue to see > things change and our stuff broken, it's a sign that maybe we're > depending too much on a fragile technology. iGoogle feels more like a > playground than a platform. > > 9) Without user-created gadgets, iGoogle would be useless. Please > respect your developers. > > Hopefully future changes will be handled a little more smoothly. > > Matt Kruse --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iGoogle Developer Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Gadgets-API?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
