The HJ standard definition:
You know you are ready for beta, when the code compiles and links.
Ok, tongue in cheek. But, Seriously. Ron Milliman's remarks reflect a
lot of my own sentiments. The quality of JFW is not improving quickly
enough to help us even keep pace with this rapidly moving industry. I
empathize with HJ technical staff in that I know they have a formidable
challenge. I am a software developer as well. In my business, we employ
automated testing programs to do what we call regression testing, that
is, to make sure that everything that used to work, still does. They are
clearly not doing that. And, I think they need to do so. I usually get
a JFW "release" and think, Jesus, this thing is not even ready for alpha.
Alpha testing comes before beta testing. Beta means you think it is
correct, and just want to have some users do some last minute
verification to make sure. But, We commonly see bugs in "final releases"
that should never have made it through testing.
We know there is a quality problem in the PC industry generally. I am
sure I don't have to convince you of that. But, JFW, being a fundamental
part of every single thing you and I do on the computer, is more
important than any individual application. It is the basic building
block upon which all the rest of our computer experience is based, and
upon which it depends. It is essential that it work as correctly as
possible. If an application misbehaves, a sighted person can usually
look at the screen and figure out what happened and deal with it. If JFW
misbehaves, we often can't even tell what is going on. In other words,
the quality standards required of a screen reader exceed those of
applications in general.
It is a damn good thing for HJ that the rest of the screen readers don't
have script languages behind them. I'm afraid HJ has got me there. Once
you master that script language, you can do so many fantastic, powerful
things to make your application work like a breeze. You could never do
that with the other screen readers. So, I'm afraid I'm stuck with HJ for
the long haul. It is, in fact, a fine screen reader, an excellent
architecture. And, thinking of that fine architecture complete with
excellent, dependable behavioral quality makes me salivate. (boy, am I a
cheap date or what?)
Come on, HJ. Let's solve the quality thing and kick the competition
clean off the board.
Editorial by:
Jim Snowbarger
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Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
