Check&Get support - THREAD UPDATED

[Darwin]

I'm fighting mad. Mean, mad, vicious  . Grrr... Hear me roar!

Check&Get is a very useful app. Unfortunately, suggestions for improvements and feature requests are met with stony silence.

Ken and I collaborated on a polite, and overwhelmingly positive, e-mail in which we enumerated perhaps five areas that we felt could be improved in Check&Get 3 and I submitted it under my name to the developer via the support form on his website. Silence. We waited a week and then I submitted the same e-mail directly to his support e-mail address, writing from my own e-mail address - the one that he should have on file as I used it to register Check&Get. Another week has passed and we have yet to receive so much as a "thank you for contacting support" canned response. This is both disappointing and infuriating. Considerable time has been spent using the application, more time spent thinking about ways that it might be improved, and yet more time composing a tactful and positively framed e-mail to suggest ways in which Check&Get might leave the ranks of the merely "good" or "adequate" and join the ranks of "must have" software. No one at Check&Get can even be motivated to send us an e-mail telling us to mind our own business, and yet that is the message that has been delivered.

I hope that the developer has been unable to check his website/e-mail for a few weeks and that this poor showing is aberrant and not indicative of an attitude that is hostile to constructive criticism. I know that the developer has been active here in the past, posting under the username dis and seemed quite receptive to suggestions.

dis, if you're still monitoring these forums, how do you respond?

Pissed in Courtenay.

[Darwin]

FWIW, here's the list of things we sought to "improve":

First, it would be nice to see an implementation of "live", progressive search in Check&Get. I have really appreciated this feature in applications such as Maxthon 2, Evernote and Directory Opus. It would be far less cumbersome than the present requirement that the user bring up a search window, specify criteria, initiate it, etc.

I love the ability to mark sites as read. What I miss is the abiiity to mark sites that I have clicked on as "unread" a la E-mail clients such as Outlook. Often I have over 30 sites to review in Check&Get and I'll click on one link but get distracted by something else that catches my eye. By the time I finish with the distraction I forget what I was looking at. If I could select a hotkey to mark a link unread before I migrate away from it this wouldn't be a problem.

Another useful feature would be a context menu item or a toolbar button instructs Check&Get to check just my hot sites. This way, I don't have check them all (I have 216 sites that I track) and I don't have to manually select the hot sites from amongst my 20 or so folders.

On the subject of folders, I'd like to be able create folders like the default ones, such as Hot Sites ("Marked"), Changed, Checking Now, etc. What I would like is the ability to create additional folders and then specify criteria for them, so that when I click on that folder, it shows the bookmarks that meet the criteria that I have set. I guess this is a bit like tagging.

Another request is to add the ability to monitor changes to FTP sites. This would be a big time saver, though I realise that it would require that Check@Get have some sort of facility to use my credentials to log-in.

Is it possible to have Check&Get ignore parts of web pages for the purposes of reporting sites as changed but still have those changes highlighted, so that when the part of the page that I AM monitoring changes and I am alerted to it, I can see what else has changed as well?

I'd like to be able to specify criteria for what I consider to be a duplicate URL  - such as anything from the same base domain, etc. Another thing I'd like to be able to modify is when the time cycle begins, so I might set it to check a particular site at 6 am, rather than just specifying how often it is checked.

Quite a few of the sites that I monitor return errors and I have to manually reselect them and check for changes. Is it already possbile to set a delay and then have Check&Get automatically recheck them? If not, could this be added? It would be very useful.

I'd like Check&Get to automatically display the first highlighted change in a page when it opens the snapshot up in the browser tab and then, at the press of a hotkey, move to the second change, and so on. Website Watcher has this feature and it is extremely handy. Basically, once you've examined the first change, you can have it take you directly to the next change so that you don't need to wade though all the text that has not changed. This makes it really simple to see what has changed and where those changes are. I realize that a workaround for this exists in the form of using the "Report of Changes" tab, but it is often difficult to appreciate the changes when you are not able to view them in context, and switching back and forth between the two tabs and manually scrolling through the page can be cumbersome on large and involved websites.

Finally, I recall being able to turn on/off the pop-up notification that appears when a webpage has changed. I like the visual notification but find the fact that Check&Get steals the focus of my computer really annoying. I use TweakUIXP to disable focus stealing but the setting never "sticks" (that is, I have to go in and reset this every time) and I often forget to do it. I'd like to first ask if the option to disable the notifications is still available (I can no longer find it) and if so, how do I access it? Second, I'd like to request that there be an option added to a future release to limit Check&Get's popups from stealing focus. This way, I can have my cake and eat it too - have the notification popup without it stealing focus.

Anyone else who uses Check&Get have any comment/anything to add?

[KenR]

As Darwin said, he and I collaborated on this, so obviously my feelings are similar. I have sent several messages to the developer and it appears I might just as well have given the feedback to one of my dogs. As with Darwin, I received no response to any of the messages I sent. This is particularly surprising given this quote from the developer:

...
Any suggestion of user interface improvements are welcome! I am contantly working on improving the user interface and appreciate any help and suggestions.

Sincerely yours,
Dmitry Skorniakov,
http://ActiveURLs.com

It's really too bad. Check & Get's design is solid and it does a number of things well. The program needs work to transform it from basic to refined though. It lacks a number of features and several existing ones could be implemented considerably better. Hopefully, something better will come along soon.

Ken

[justice]

It's summer-time, maybe the developer is on holiday at the moment?

[arunpawar]

Maybe your ISP can tell you from which IP address this messg came then you have to ask thier ISP to trace this GUY at the end hurt that person its that simple  well its not it ill take months for this.

[rjbull]

If I could select a hotkey to mark a link unread before I migrate away from it this wouldn't be a problem.

I realise that you've looked at WebSite-Watcher (WSW), so the following may not be news...

In WSW, to toggle a link read/unread, press Ctrl-M.

Another useful feature would be a context menu item or a toolbar button instructs Check&Get to check just my hot sites. This way, I don't have check them all (I have 216 sites that I track) and I don't have to manually select the hot sites from amongst my 20 or so folders.

WSW has a HotSites folder, where you can copy URLs.  Just press F9 on the folder and it will check the entire list (though I don't think it does nested subfolders).

Another request is to add the ability to monitor changes to FTP sites. This would be a big time saver, though I realise that it would require that Check@Get have some sort of facility to use my credentials to log-in.

WSW has a login system.  Hasty disclaimer, I have not tried it.

Is it possible to have Check&Get ignore parts of web pages for the purposes of reporting sites as changed but still have those changes highlighted, so that when the part of the page that I AM monitoring changes and I am alerted to it, I can see what else has changed as well?

From WSW's Help file;

With a filter you can ignore specific parts of a page to prevent false update notifications.
If a filter is defined, WebSite-Watcher will compare the filtered content of the new version with the filtered content of the old version of a page to detect updates.

Another thing I'd like to be able to modify is when the time cycle begins, so I might set it to check a particular site at 6 am, rather than just specifying how often it is checked. Quite a few of the sites that I monitor return errors and I have to manually reselect them and check for changes. Is it already possbile to set a delay and then have Check&Get automatically recheck them? If not, could this be added? It would be very useful.

Not sure if WSW can do that natively, but it has its own scripting language with constructs like getting the current time and date, and waiting until some time, with flow control statements, so it should be possible with a script.

I'd like Check&Get to automatically display the first highlighted change in a page when it opens the snapshot up in the browser tab and then, at the press of a hotkey, move to the second change, and so on. Website Watcher has this feature and it is extremely handy.

Need I say more? 

[lanux128]

Darwin, from the user profile it can be seen that the dev was last active on June 15, 2006 and it has been some time since the website was been updated. maybe he lost interest over time, as the updates has been sporadic after churning out frequent updates in 2005.. just my 2¢..

[Darwin]

Just a quick note in response to some comments here:

1. I'm hoping the developer is on vacation as well (as alluded to in my original post) but Ken has been trying for some time to reach him without success.
2. Website Watcher looks fantastic - indeed some of these suggsetions were inspired by it. However, having paid for a licence for Check&Get and having invested two years of my life into configuring it and observing ways in which it might be improved, I would like to make a concerted effort to engage in a dialogue with the developer first, before jumping ship. It's not like Check&Get doesn't work, it just needs some tweaking to make it "great".
3. Yes, I had noticed that it's been over a year since dis was active here (though honestly compels me admit that I hadn't quite twigged to the fact that it's been so long; I thought it was more like 8 or 9 months...), but I was hoping that he might be monitoring DC nonetheless.  If he's not, the dialogue generated here isn't wasted! And if he never responds I can always drop a load over at Renegade's magnificent shitware site (er, pun intended  ).

[lanux128]

yeah, it sucks when after two years of tweaking & configuring, the program becomes abandon-ware.. i've had similar experiences before.. hmm, maybe i should start a new thread..

[iphigenie]

I wasnt going to say anything but the bit about "shitware" crossed a line. So I'm going to play devil's advocate... and rant a bit.

So make yourselves comfortable, get a drink, while I go find my soapbox...

I find it wrong that we all seem to expect such high standards from little independent developers, not only expect it but demand it and consider it something we are owed. I know you didnt quite mean it like this, but I have seen it often enough in threads even here, and this thread is where I suddenly decide to make a bit of a rant 

I understand it is frustrating when you take the time to make bug reports and improvement suggestion and get nothing back (I just got that from ebay after I pointed out some major problems with their new "bid assistant" feature and got nowhere), but to jump from there to complaining as if you were entitled to detailed responses etc. is probably a bit too far. The developer not answering email 2 years after you registered the software does not quite justify suggesting that the software should be listed as "shitware".

Most of these programs have one developer. Most likely doing it in their spare time as they still need a job to pay the bills. And maybe he is busy, or on holiday, or ill, or has any kind of problems. Maybe there are problems with his ISP. Maybe his computer has blown up, or his connection is down. Maybe the publicised mailbox gets such levels of spam it only gets checked once a month, or the spam filter has false positives.  Or maybe he is just too busy to even notice, working, writing a new version, writing something else, with a new baby, with a sick relative... You just don't know.

I have written software, both desktop and web, in the past, and have always balked at releasing any of it even as freeware. Because as soon as you do there are dozens of people out there who will think it makes them entitled to demand changes, fixes, more documentation. Instead of grateful people - which there are but you never hear from them - you get people whining about everything. For every helpful email with useful detailed bug reports or polite and documented suggestions, you get 10 whines and "program X which costs $50 has feature Y why cant your free tool have it!!!". And people email you expecting responses within 2 days. As if you were somehow a business with paid customer service employees. Not to count the people who email you about problems totally unrelated to your software...

If you buy a kettle and it starts having a problem 18 months later, you just don't expect that you can email the kettle maker, or walk into the store where you originally bought it and have the customer service desk do anything about it. Neither do you expect any of the big software makers to support anything more than 12 months old for free.

Yet we routinely get shareware/donationware authors giving us support years after we registered their software (I still get total commander for free 11 YEARS after I registered it!!!). This is something we should cherish, rave about, be grateful about. It's not something we should take for granted and think we are entitled to. It is great that with many shareware, freeware, donationware programs you get developers who interact directly with their customers, listen to them and make improvements on demand. It is great when you registered something years ago and you still get support and upgrades for free years later.

It's something exceptional. We should thank them when we get that kind of service, and give them plenty of publicity.

I just don't think we should consider it our due and whine when a single author of a shareware doesn't react after 3 weeks...

[justice]

I agree partly with what you're saying, but I think you should make a distinction between people who offer their software for no charge (voluntarily), and those who charge for it (commercial).

And ofcourse, on the one side constructive feedback sent with an aim to help with the development of a program, and on the other side non contributory (?) whining - which i've not seen on this forum.

[aignes]

Not sure if Check&Get is still developed or maintained, but we realized that e-mailing got more and more un-reliable during the last months and our customers sometimes didn't receive our replies. I don't know where these e-mails stranded (I didn't get bounces back). That's one of the reasons why I introduced a ticket system a few months ago to provide more reliable support.

Probably the C&G author has similar problems and you simply don't receive the answers... But you're right, it's very annoying for a user when he cannot verify if a request was successfully submitted and/or answered...

[iphigenie]

Spam levels have just reached ridiculous levels recently and many people have had to up their spam filter to the point where we have false positives, just to cope. We have 100 employees here and get about 15000 spam emails PER HOUR. Our choice is to either have 100 employees whine that they get spam (or worse, them falling for a scam!) OR have the occasional false positive and email not coming through - which is almost impossible to find in the mass of spam. We settle for sometimes having email go missing, it is less time consuming.

[iphigenie]

I agree partly with what you're saying, but I think you should make a distinction between people who offer their software for no charge (voluntarily), and those who charge for it (commercial).

If I buy a £200 accounting package, how much support do I get? If I am super lucky, 90 days for free. It is worse for other full commercial ware. Some have non free support, pay-per-call lines, or 30 days etc. For our virus scanners we pay yearly, more and more...

I totally understand sharing the frustration of having a good piece of software with so much potential and not getting through to someone who could at least listen and respond (mostly because in this forum we often have the chance to see developers respond within hours with a fix, new feature etc. and we kind of get used to this luxury). I share that frustration.

But even if the software is paid for, I object to seeing us call a piece of software "shitware", even as a joke, because we didnt get an answer after 3 weeks... it feels unfair.

[Darwin]

But even if the software is paid for, I object to seeing us call a piece of software "shitware", even as a joke, because we didnt get an answer after 3 weeks... it feels unfair.

Fair comment and guilty as charged. I regret making the off the cuff remark about shitware (to clarify, I had been thinking about the shitty support forum on the shitware site, not the software one, but no matter) in my previous post - Check&Get is anything but shitware, it is a very fine piece of software and in the past I have a number of very pleasant e-mail exchanges with the author, so I am beginning to suspect that your observations about spam may be correct.

While I accept the argument that spam may be the culprit here, and that I may be dealing with a single person developing Check&Get (I am certain that I am), I don't feel that it is unreasonable for an end-user to expect to be able to reach the developer and to receive a reply. My initial message was sent through the official website's support via a form for that purpose complete with my registration details, which should have warranted at least a canned response letting me know that it was received. Admittedly, I was redirected after submission to a "thank you" page, but nothing to my e-mail address. Surely, the inclusion of my registration details - entered into a discrete field on the form - should have been enough to elevate the message from "likely spam" to "likely spam that should be manually checked and verified before being deleted forever"? Now, the message may have been received, read, and the issues raised even added to a "to do list", but I am firmly of the belief that if someone takes the time to write and suggest improvements to your product, with the intention of improving the product and making it a more attractive option for future consumers, a reply is required, even if only to say thank you for the suggestions.

I would genuinely like to see Check&Get continue to be developed and improved, ie this wasn't intended to be a petulant snivel suggesting that the application is crap because it doesn't do what I want it to do - I love using it already and merely sought to provide my informed input, as a long-time daily user, to make it even better. This does not in any way mean that it is not a solid, reliable, application as it stands. Look at the strides made between Check&Get 2 - reviewed in the DC Website monitoring review - and Check&Get 3. I believe that Ken and I have made a number of suggestions that, if implemented progressively over a number of future builds, would result in an app that represents an equally great step forward over the current version. I am also of the opinion (based in no way on any knowledge of, or expertise in, coding!) that the majoirty of the changes that we have mentioned are not significant from a developmental perspective. I accept, of course, that I may be very naive in asserting this. Nevertheless, there it is...

I suspect that this argument, if carried forward, would look very much like the "software piracy is acceptable vs. Software piracy is unacceptable" argument that comes up from time to time on DC and goes around in circles.

[KenR]

I don't accept spam as an excuse (or explanation) here. I sent multiple messages, all of which went through the developers website, rather than my email package. Therefore, I don't have a record of them. I began sending them shortly after I purchased the program. Since I installed Check & Get in May of this year. We can reasonably infer that I have been trying to contact the developer for approximately 3 months.

Someone is just not trying when they don't respond to 1) emails from their customers from their own site, 2) emails from outsite the system they've set up but to a previously known good email address from which no "bounce" email message is received, and finally )3 posts in a forum.

If the developer is no longer providing support he should say so. If the software is dead and no further developing is going to take place, that should be made clear - though I know few authors do this. Why? Because people wouldn't buy their software if they knew it was dead. So why not just give people the impression things are still fine so you can screw potential customers out of some money.

I don't think the software is shit, but I certainly think the support is. The biggest tragedy here is that the program could really be good with some changes. Instead, it's just mediocre at best.

Ken

[iphigenie]

I totally understand where you are coming from, and that you didnt really mean it as an attack on the software or developer, just a profound disappointment (the anger was more due to having spent so much time crafting the email etc. for nothing). I just thought it a good idea to make a point that we are blessed with so much good service in this community we start taking it for granted and feeling cheated when we don't get it... and to a certain extent we should be, but we must also remember that a lot of those people are one man bands with a second job... or a small group doing their best but who now and then will have a few off weeks or months.

I wasnt trying to start a debate at all - now let me tell my ebay-support-are-ignoramuses story...  

PS: I didn't manage to make either Check-n-Get or website watcher work for me - neither saved me that much time, as the time saved checking sites  was kind of eaten by the micro management applications seem to require... It could be that this is more satisfying than browsing for many people, or that it gets better after a month or two, but it didnt work that way for me.

[iphigenie]

If the developer is no longer providing support he should say so. If the software is dead and no further developing is going to take place, that should be made clear - though I know few authors do this. Why? Because people wouldn't buy their software if they knew it was dead.

That is certainly a totally fair point.

I might buy software that is no longer being worked on if it does everything I need -I don't believe that a software needs a new version every 6 months- but I would hesitate to buy if there was no support at all anymore if I encounter any bugs.

[iphigenie]

By the way, Martin (aignes) has added a "portable" option to both WSW and LWA 

[Darwin]

I should offer thanks, too, for Martin's continued participation in the DC forums. I've really appreciated his balanced contributions to the discussions of Website Watcher and its competitors - 

[Darwin]

Interesting, I just found this post from the developer of UltraExplorer... Resonates a bit WRT this thread.

[aignes]

I should offer thanks, too, for Martin's continued participation in the DC forums. I've really appreciated his balanced contributions to the discussions of Website Watcher and its competitors

Thanks, Darwin

[Darwin]

I'm just sitting here watching the tumbleweeds tumble by... little eddies of wind pick up dust and redistribute it around town... Not a word from Check&Get in response to either of my e-mails or the online suggestion submission form...

[lanux128]

I'm just sitting here watching the tumbleweeds tumble by... little eddies of wind pick up dust and redistribute it around town...

Darwin, was it not for you being frustrated over the whole matter, the verse above is actually quite poetic..

[Darwin]

Thanks, Lanux! I think it's time I rang Check&Get's developer's bell again, don't you?! Right, off to do just that!