New policy - separate beta and stable versions

[mouser]

From now on I am going to endeavor to keep TWO versions of each program available at any time:

• The last stable release
• The newest beta release

You can see an example on the new URL Snooper page:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/urlsnooper/index.html

There will be separate downloads and help files for each.

This should make it easier to roll back to the last stable version if you ever have trouble with the latest beta, and make it possible to compare the two help pages to see what's new at any time.

Hope you find it useful; I'll gradually be adding this for all my software.

[Carol Haynes]

Good idea - very useful.

[mouser]

another new policy i am going to try to follow:

i will not feel compelled to do full real updates of the help file with beta releases,
but i will make a solid attempt from now on to have full stable version releases include an up-to-date help file.

it seems to me that if we expect to earn a reputation of top quality software, our help files should be up to date.

[kfitting]

Good idea with the helpfile mouser... I looked at a few programs this weekend and ditched them all because the documentation was so poor I couldnt figure out how to do what they said I could do!  In my opinion, documentation is the most overlooked essential in software design... coming in just behind interface design!

Kevin