Cannot enter activation key.

[MikleB]

G'day mouser,

I have the latest version of Progress Bars Of Life (v2.03.00 - May 16, 2014) installed and it asks me for the activation key but there does not seem to be any way to paste it into the program. If I click on the help button I don't get an option to choose 'About', which is were I am informed that I should place the key, as it IS the usual location where other DonationCoder programs will accept their keys, but I am only shown the actual help file for the program.

I have had it installed for about 2 and a half months and although it is not at this time proving to be very usefull as I don't have many events that I could track with it, I see it as a very potentially usefull item that could and should be developed further (I read on the forum that you yourself were a little taken aback that it hasn't been more widely taken up by the visitors to your site). I have some suggestions for it's development as a general timekeeping utility that I feel could make it a very handy alternative to a full featured P.I.M. including some features that would be a little out of place within a P.I.M. but that sit within the framework of problems/items that could be resolved or simplified within such a program as Progress Bars Of Life appears to potentially be able of becoming.

I haven't posted regarding this problem till now as I felt it best to let the N.A.N.Y. period and it's workload pass.

P.S: I was the person that you checked as to wether my e-mail address had been used as a registration address very early one morning 2 months ago after either Deozaan or Stephen66515  dragged you to the keyboard after a short respite from being on line. Thank you again for that assistance then, as I was just about to ask that you not be disturbed to do that task but alas, I was too slow and there you were... helping an unknown from the wilds of the internet. Much appreciated.

[mouser]

Hi MikleB!

Ok I can see the confusion!! Somehow i didn't put the About menu in the tray menu or on the DOCKED menu!
I'll release an update soon that fixes that.

For now though, the trick is to UNDOCK the program from the side of your screen (click and drag it off side of screen). Only then will you see a help menu with an About menu item that will let you put in license key.

I can't believe no one has pointed this out to me until now!

[Deozaan]

I didn't even know PBOL needed a license key. Does it automatically grab the key from somewhere else if you have another DC program installed? Or did I just do it so long ago that I forgot about it?

[mouser]

Does it automatically grab the key from somewhere else if you have another DC program installed?

all my apps do. if you have received a license for donating, it will be seen by all apps, and be valid for all of time, as soon as you put it into one.

[MikleB]

Oops.. My bad... Well not really... O.K. Sorta!

I haven't been running PBOL docked at all, but the place where I was looking to paste the activation key was not through the MAIN Bars Display window's help dialog, which does indeed show an about option and accepts the registration key, but through the Edit Bars window's help dialog which goes only to the actual help file.

This makes sense of course because if you are adding or editing program options (I.E: Bars in this case.), then it is kind of logical to think that any user would have already investigated how to have the program registered and not nagging to have a key installed. I think that I may be a little more aware of the Help Button on the Edit window menu as it is nice and prominent and not greyed out as the Help Menu item mainly is on my Bar Display (The program loads, I check the items and as I said in my first post, I don't have many events so I tend to close the program and even when I do leave it running and add or modify it, I use the right click popup menu and not the menu bar itself to enter the edit mode.). This popup does allow to check for updates however... Hmm.

That having been said though, there is no option to enter the activation key via the tray icon's menu like there is for "Clipboard Help And Spell", "Launchbar Commander", "Find And Run Robot" or "Screenshot Captor", and was the other major area that I looked for as I do often see the option to enter the key in these more regularly used programs, though I'm still trialing them.

Though a little off topic, while initially formulating this post I loaded up all 6 Donation Coder programs that I have installed aside from Coding Snacks/One Hour Software, to see how activation keys were accepted and what paths one has to travel to retrieve and load them, and the sixth one being "Easy Screencast Recorder" is quite amusing. Maybe I should post a new topic in the "Easy Screencast Recorder" thread regarding this so their are two topics for this program, but I will place it here as it is related to this topic. While "Easy Screencast Recorder" does accept an activation key and its topic does have a placeholder to navigate to a download location for that key. There is no key. I understand that it is just a little helper program that can be intergrated within "Screenshot Captor" and of course can use  the permanent key that becomes available either on donation or the key that is available after a year of forum registration and two six month key downloads, but why no seperate key? An oversite I'm certain, but it does need looking into. Also no option to enter the key from the tray menu which is a great place to have this option.

I have been having a good nosey around the DC Forums of late (Fills my time as I'm currently unemployed.) and am aware that many visitors become irate at how complex they feel that the program registration process is (Seems quite reasonable to me.), it would seem advantageous to maintain a bit more consistancy in as much as first impressions (Wrong or right.) are the ones that many people tend to use to form their opinions on. I'm not stating this to be negative, it's just that if it threw me for a loop then for a newbie (Hate that term but it is appropriate.) it could be quite the stuff to make one want tear their hair out. Of course I make this comment aware of the fact that I have been a little conditioned by seeing the option regularly within the tray popup menu and a new user might not be so conditioned and really would just need better hand holding to be led through the correct proceedure.

mouser, you state that "I'm not made of magic--" (Re: Easy Screencast Recorder - NANY 2013 Entry « Reply #3) but from what I have seen of both the software available on this site and its quality and for the manner in which you address the issues raised by the users of those software items you come pretty close. Kudos are decidedly in order. Cheers mate, you efforts are much appreciated.

[mouser]

Thank you so much for your kind words.  It always surprises me how kind some people can be towards me even when they encounter frustration and bugs.. I only hope I can learn to be half as patient and kind in my interactions with others.

I will fix the issues with PBOL in a new release this week, and I was recently contacted by someone about Easy Screencast Recorder, and how the license key doesn't work in it -- or rather it does but the app still complains about being a beta test and expired -- so I will be releasing an update of that along with PBOL.