Would you fund a campaign for a better livecode website?

[shaunalan]

truly don't care for the current livecode site, I believe that doesn't show what livecode truly is; on the opposite it sells out the genuine soul of livecode. It' s so mysterious thus dubious that could be anything. I can't peruse anyplace that you can make a product for windows/macintosh/linux/Android/iOS/web, it just appears to be an apparatus only for iOS like:

...

cmolds. com /ios-app-development



As should be obvious there are huge amounts of website comparative and better to the current livecode site. Livecode is considerably more than those destinations, and individuals will never know it.

I don't care for just condemn without proposing an answer.

What might buy in a crusade for another and better site?

I trust that Mr. Kevin Miller read this post.

[AxWald]

Hi,

[...] it just appears to be an apparatus only for iOS [...]

It seems this IS what the mothership wishes LC to be.
From long participation here & following the development of LC I cannot help but estimate that iOS apps are the main target, and MacOS is what's used in Edinburgh nearly exclusively. Android is only touched if it cannot be avoided, and Windows & Linux are shunned like the plague.

[...] I trust that Mr. Kevin Miller read this post.

You may need to participate in the quoting hell & mixed-up-threads chaos of the mailing list to be heard. There dwell the powers that be.

I'm not happy about it, but I doubt they'd want to change it - I assume they know what they do.

Have fun!

[richmond62]

I wonder how many times I have to mention "Obsession about handhelds" for someone at LiveCode central to . . . ?

[jacque]

Android has received as much attention as iOS these days, I've submitted my share of Android bugs and they have all been fixed promptly. I've seen Windows fixes happen as they are reported too. I do know that Linux is lagging, partly because the team member who worked on that platform has left.

I do agree that the web site could be more informative for the people who want more technical information. If a person is exploring a new programming language they are likely to want to know some details about how it works.

BTW, Mr Kevin Miller uses an Android phone.

[FourthWorld]

truly don't care for the current livecode site, I believe that doesn't show what livecode truly is; on the opposite it sells out the genuine soul of livecode.
As should be obvious there are huge amounts of website comparative and better to the current livecode site. Livecode is considerably more than those destinations, and individuals will never know it.

Welcome to the forums, seanalan.

I agree that LiveCode is far more powerful than some may give it credit.

What are you building with LiveCode, and what features do you feel are most valuable?

I don't care for just condemn without proposing an answer.

Rarely seen, always appreciated.

But I don't believe money alone isn't the answer, and certainly not limited to the web site exclusively. If we were looking at web sites alone, we might note that LC's Alexa rank is neatly five times better than the site you linked to you in your post (clever workaround for the min-post limit to post links). LC's taxonomy is clearer than that site's, and I find LC Ltd generally receptive to specific actionable suggestions for improvement.

So rather than just put more money into the middle of the funnel, I believe the stronger opportunity is at either end of the funnel: enhanced content strategy for raise awareness among new prospects, and enhanced CX for those who dive in to download and try. One can debate site details forever, but as you explore LC more I believe you'll find the top of the funnel, content strategy, is currently the greater underinvestment.

I trust that Mr. Kevin Miller read this post.

You've chosen to post your link into a user-to-user support forum, where it will certainly be read by many users looking for LiveCode solutions, but is only infrequently visited by Kevin.

As the Community Liaison, I would be happy to forward any specific actionable suggestions which may develop in this thread.

[mwieder]

The website continues to be an ongoing embarrassment.
My guess is that if the HTML5 component of LiveCode actually worked the website would be constructed using it rather than WordPress.

Has anyone actually looked at the website stats using Chrome's developer tools?
There's a 1.2MB mp4 file (My Movie 2555.mp4) that takes several seconds to load while the page is blank.
And a 151kb text document (livecode.com) that takes two and a half seconds.
And that's not even counting one and a half seconds flailing and failing to find mashsb.min.css.

Update:
I just loaded livecodeshare.runrev.com and it took over 40 seconds.

[richmond62]

Beethoven was a brilliant, brilliant composer.

He lived on the second floor of a house and when he was working away at the piano and
needed to take a piss, he'd just piss through the floor boards on the people downstairs.
His idea of hygiene and housekeeping was non-existent: so, friends of his would pay for a
cleaner to come round once a month and muck out the pigsty.

[FourthWorld]

The website continues to be an ongoing embarrassment.

What specifically would you like to see changed?

My guess is that if the HTML5 component of LiveCode actually worked the website would be constructed using it rather than WordPress.

WordPress is a very comprehensive server-based CMS. What could LC's HTML5 export provide that WP doesn't out of the box?

[mwieder]

WordPress is a very comprehensive server-based CMS. What could LC's HTML5 export provide that WP doesn't out of the box?

That's easy - a demonstration of eating our own dogfood.
A "this website made with LiveCode" logo.
An example of how easy it is to export a stack to a website. Isn't that the point of the HTML5 drive in the first place?
I can't help but see the lack of the flagship webpage *not* being developed in LiveCode as a sign of failure. And I can't believe I'm alone in that.
It's rather like hanging out a sign saying "we design websites" and using a godaddy template instead.

[JackieBlue1970]

No, of course not. To my knowledge, they are a for profit business. A website is part of doing business, especially when your distribution is totally based on the website. Having a better website will result in more business for them. Do they not have business people running this company? They need to decide if they are a business and run it as such (or shut it down if it is not viable). Honestly, if they want to switch to a non-profit I'm much more inclined to give money as well as be understanding of the challenges they face. If you are a for profit business, the challenges are always there and it is the business owner's/management's job to mitigate them or decide to shut down the business. It is not what I want for LiveCode, but that is how business works. I do not know UK tax law but I find it interesting that the "donations" are charged tax and count as income for them. If they turn around and then give free product, as implied in their last blog, this is then a donation from them. Like I said, no idea how it works in the UK but in the US that would be an expense and would not be taxed.

Perhaps they need operating capital. It happens. If they cannot get loans, then do a fund raiser where people who contribute get x-amount of the company. Obviously there would be certain regulations involved that I am not fully versed in but it is an option. My business is quite small (less than $500k turnover per year) but I have lines of credit and emergency funds to smooth out the ebb and flow of the business.

[bogs]

That's easy - a demonstration of eating our own dogfood.

I often wonder, Mark, whether or not you came from a Delphi background like I did. I swear up till the .net releases, that those (almost) exact words were Borland's motto. From memory, it went something like ...

Delphi is made with Delphi, we eat our own dog food...

I used to love reading it, too. Man, now I have to go dig out my Delph7 environment again <sigh>

[mwieder]

The entire LiveCode IDE is written using LiveCode scripting. That's a selling point by itself.

[bogs]

Certainly it is....but not the engine, or I believe the widgets right? Delphi was pure Delphi, if I remember it correctly, a graphical front end to Pascal. I could be mis-remembering, it sure wouldn't be the first time that ever happened

[mwieder]

What I liked most about Delphi (I dabbled in Delphi but Pascal was more of a sideline to a committed C programmer like me) was the community and the way Borland enabled and fostered that community. It paid off in the ROI in terms of keeping its fanbase and in building its market. It's still my ideal of what community sponsorship could be, and what LC's community could be if the company took the initiative.

[FourthWorld]

WordPress is a very comprehensive server-based CMS. What could LC's HTML5 export provide that WP doesn't out of the box?

That's easy - a demonstration of eating our own dogfood.

Should they also send their emails from their own custom email client written in LC? Write the documentation in their own word processor made with LC? Do their accounting in a double-entry system made with LC? Handle version control in their own custom VCS?

At what point is it a better message to demonstrate an awareness of ROI?

Each of those I listed are things I've seen folks build with LC. And for the purposes they were built, they're awesome. But that's the thing: just because you CAN do something doesn't make it the best choice.

Each of those real-world cases were tailored for specific niches, specialized vertical-market needs so narrow it would have been cost-prohibitive to write them in C, C++, Java, or most other choices.

LC makes it a snap to build great verticals. And it's among the very best choices for verticals. But generic needs tend to be addressed by large, well-funded companies who focus on that market. They often do quite well - but WordPress isn't in the desktop app-dev business, and it's users aren't expecting them to be.

A good CMS is a lot of work. Check out the WP scheme just to see what that one corner looks like. Then you need a templating language, roles, review workflows, and so much more. And after several person-years of effort, you'd have something satisfyingly close to WP, but not compelling, because everyone's already using WP.

That's a very expensive calling card.

When I was starting out I wrote a letter to one of the senior engineers on the SuperCard team, proudly noting that I had written the letter in a word processor I'd written in SuperCard. He liked my letter, and eventually I formed a good partnership with the owners of the product. But it wasn't because of my custom word processor, merely my enthusiasm. I abandoned my word processor just a few months later, because there are so many good one it just didn't make sense to build yet another.

If LC Ltd's external communications had such unusual needs that a custom CMS made sense, I'd be right there with you. I've built CMSes in LC, so I know how valuable they can be for specialized needs (the most feature-rich was for a decision support tool for pediatric emergency specialists - talk about vertical! <g>).

But all LC needs to do with their main site is what WP handles well, so there's not much upside to replicating several person-years of work just to put up a web site.

I don't think it's a mistake to show that they have awareness of what provides ROI and what doesn't, Given the uncommonly high expense of just the core mission -- deploying to nearly every major platform -- I'd be more concerned if they were writing their own versions of generic software in any category.

A "this website made with LiveCode" logo.
An example of how easy it is to export a stack to a website. Isn't that the point of the HTML5 drive in the first place?
I can't help but see the lack of the flagship webpage *not* being developed in LiveCode as a sign of failure. And I can't believe I'm alone in that.

True, a lot of people have much enthusiasm about things for other people to do, but little experience covering payroll for more than a dozen specialists, or writing all the components presumed easy.