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Website Change Monitoring Review/Award - WebsiteWatcher

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moerl:
Well.. I like xplorer2 because it's LITE and is very powerful for its size. Many commands can be used directly through the address bar, and it's got a lot of hidden options as well. I do have a license for DOpus though. I'd have to check if it's still valid :). I might give it another shot, who knows. I'll find out about my license and post back when I do.

And mouser, that's right. You can keep using the programs without worrying about preferences, but you see, I'm the type of user that likes to know what's UNDER THE HOOD. As such, I hate software where I don't even understand what the hell I'm looking at in the preferences, or where I don't even udnerstand the certain options do. In certain software that has more features than I need or use, that is acceptable, and such may be the case with DOpus. But in WSW I'd like to know what it all is :/

It doesn't even necessarily have to be changed, although that would be ideal. The Foobar guys, for instance, got their act together with 0.9RC and cleaned up the preferences. I always disliked Foobar before, but when my beta QMP died on me lately, I gave the Foo another shot, not having known it was updated recently, and found myself really liking it with the new preferences. This issue, then, is so important to me that it can make the difference between love and hate for a program!

One very easy way to fix bloated preferences dialogs is to add tool tip explanations of the different functions, or help buttons, or, the best way to do it: an area of the preferences window where infos just show up as you mouse over everything. It's a fairly easy fix and does the trick as it informs the user about what's up, even if the preferences are bloated and shitty.

mouser:
getting back on topic - i think we should update the website change review, some new programs have come to light since the review.  if anyone wants to write their impressions of the new programs it might be a nice start.

taichimaster:
the main thing is that in both cases you can just ignore them and use the programs without worrying about them
--- End quote ---

Although I agree with that, it's not necessary the case all the time.  See the following quote from Joel,

Even if you think your new feature is all good and can't hurt because "people who don't care can just ignore it," you're forgetting that the people who allegedly don't care are still forced to look at your feature and figure out if they need it.

"How could a mute button on a sound system hurt?" After all, if you don't want to waste time learning about the mute button, you can just ignore it completely, right?

No. Because at some point, someone will hit it by mistake, and no sound will come out of the speakers, and if they don't know about "mute," they'll start trying to turn up the volume knob all the way, so when they do finally unmute the thing, the speakers will blow out with an ear-shattering boom that creates permanent, concave warps in each of the walls of the room where the sound system was installed (and a matching hump in the floor of the apartment upstairs).
--- End quote ---

The entire article could be read here http://www.joelonsoftware.com/design/1stDraft/01.html

I don't think there are too many preferences in WSW though, it's an absolute wonderful piece of software and worth every single penny of it (esp. with the discount)!!!

mouser:
let me say that i completely agree that too many options can hurt - they make it harder to find the options you really need and care about.

i think in the future we will probably eventually move to a standardized options control interface, and perhaps with some way of switching betten a simple main view and full view, etc.

Chris:
To see an overview  on Web Page Change Detection Services see http://staff.philau.edu/BellS/keepup/detectit.htm.

While I PC based programs may work well, I like the Web based services. They can check sites every day and email the results. Hence the results can be received any where through webmail and your PC does not need to be going. I personally like Watch That Page http://www.watchthatpage.com. It is a free service for normal use and is very good, but does not have all the features of some of the others.

My ideal would be to a have my own server based program, (written in PHP) andrunning on my own server. It could have the features of the PC programs and I would have full control of the program.

Chris

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