Finally! Cybook Firmware upgrade available for download!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Are you a devloper yourself ?

I am, and i can easily see how the meta data could have escape them. I didn't saw it either, until such a point i tried to add new books.
True, then sould have re-tested that, to make sure it wasn't broken... Or they did and the the file name was close enough to meta data and the lack for autor / publishers wasn't noticed.
Halas one tends to be lazy with testing things that *should* not have been touched, and thus not broken.

They'll probably release a fix for that one, and everything will be back to normal.

The point was that if you know you have not tested it properly you call it a beta release. And that I totally agree with.

And you should have automatic regression tests. That is because it is well know as you say that people are lazy. So not having regression tests is not so professional.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by tompe

And you should have automatic regression tests. That is because it is well know as you say that people are lazy. So not having regression tests is not so professional.

But not unheard of in small companies.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

But not unheard of in small companies.

But more important for small companies since they do not have the manpower to repeat all tests manually.

[GeoffC]

they have only all the time in the world ....

[HarryT]

I hope we've all sent Bookeen an e-mail complaining about this bug?

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by chlorine

For dictionary lookup speed, I implemented the following scheme, which seems to work OK: I placed the dictionaries on the root of the eBooks folder on the cybook. All my other books are on the SD card, but not in the eBooks folder: I created a MyBooks folder for them. I think it doesn't look up for dictionaries there, and I believe the same would happen if you created a MyBooks folder on the cybook itself.
Others should test this though, because I don't have that many books on the SD card.

EDiT: I'm not running 1.5 yet, but the previous version with folder support that was distributed at the Paris meetup, so the way folders are managed might be different for 1.5.

As I said elsewhere, with the previous version, I'd follow the suggestion and put my dictionaries (and only them) at the root of eBooks. All the others were in subfolders, and the search was fast (3-5s).
Now, with the same configuration, 70s... It's really a bug !

BTW, I sent a mail at Bookeen with great details to explicit the issue. Now start the wait !

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I hope we've all sent Bookeen an e-mail complaining about this bug?

Since they do not communicate with the customers I will not communicate with them...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Since they do not communicate with the customers I will not communicate with them...

I've always found them responsive to support questions, personally.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've always found them responsive to support questions, personally.

And as other have reported it seems to depend on the question. I still have questions I have not gotten any answer to.

But I was mostly thinking about the communication on the blog and in other places.

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by tompe

Since they do not communicate with the customers I will not communicate with them...

Didn't you forget something ? Isn't there a smiley that's pulling its tongue ? This one, maybe...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Let's see, I know the screen is 800x600, and so I use a 800x600 cover image, and set it to 100% width. It will take the whole screen, if the screen is in fact 800x600. But if you have a status bar making it only 780x600, the image is still 100% wide, and will extend beyond the bottom of the screen (or the status bar covers the bottom of the image, as you prefer). Since the image cannot react to the screen height, there's nothing the reader can do to "fix" this. It could automatically resize the image to fit the screen, as mobipocket does, but this is not a standard behaviour with ePUB.

Try making the height 100%. That should work and solve the problem.

[chlorine]

Originally Posted by Idoine

As I said elsewhere, with the previous version, I'd follow the suggestion and put my dictionaries (and only them) at the root of eBooks. All the others were in subfolders, and the search was fast (3-5s).
Now, with the same configuration, 70s... It's really a bug !

BTW, I sent a mail at Bookeen with great details to explicit the issue. Now start the wait !

I meant place all non-dictionary books in another folder than eBooks. Possibly only the eBooks folder and its subfolders are scanned.

[Baumi]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Are you a devloper yourself ?

I am, and i can easily see how the meta data could have escape them. I didn't saw it either, until such a point i tried to add new books.

I am a dev myself, too - and adding new books is just standard functionality on a book-reading device. Of course that should be tested, especially since it only takes a few seconds to do so. Furthermore, one of the most basic rues of development is: Never release an update directly before a weekend or a holiday. You should always be able to react quickly should unforseen bugs occur.

I know that everyone has been clamoring for this update for months (because Bookeen has been promising it for even longer), but when they announced availability "before the end of the year" the other day, they could easily have said something like "in the first week of January" instead, without getting any more ill will from the community.

Halas one tends to be lazy with testing things that *should* not have been touched, and thus not broken.

That's not really much of a comfort for those people who updated their Opus and are now stuck with a new firmware that has lost some functionality.

That doesn't mean that Bookeen is evil or has stupid developers - but when a project misses its original deadline that badly and is released with unfixed bugs in the very basic functionality, something in the development process has clearly gone wrong - and that's not necessarily a good sign for future products.

They'll probably release a fix for that one, and everything will be back to normal.

I hope they will, I really do - but after the eternal wait for this firmware, it also wouldn't surprise me if the bug is left unattended for months. Over the last year or so, Booken unfortunately didn't act like a company that cares much about its existing customer base - so it'll take a bit more than a long-overdue, buggy firmware update to convince me they've changed their ways.

IMHO, the proper course of action now would be a public acknowledgement of the bug coupled with a warning on the firmware download page and maybe a d/l option for the current 1.9 firmware (so people can decide for themselves if they'd rather have occasional crashes or buggy epub imports) and an ETA on an updated firmware. If it really is a small bug, it shouldn't take more than a month to fix - including testing. If sudden complications delay it, the devs can drop a few lines about that on the blog, as well. That way, their customers know the company cares about them and improving their software. And Bookeen should care about their customer base - with so many new e-readers coming out in 2010 (most of them based on the same or very similar hardware as Bookeen's products), people are easily tempted to switch to a competing product if they're not happy with their current reader.

You've seen what happens when a company doesn't communicate: Not everybody is as patient as you are, and quite a few people here aren't recommending Bookeen's products to people anymore, not because of any terminal flaw in the software but because the company's lack of communication frustrated them. A few words of explanation every once in a while could have easily prevented that. (It's not only Bookeen - quite a similar thing is currently happening to txtr in Germany who couldn't live up to the buzz they created themselves and are feeling the backlash now.)

That said, I'll officially and publicly applaud Bookeen if they manage to either solve this bug in a timely manner or communicate clearly why it's not trivial to fix it.

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by chlorine

I meant place all non-dictionary books in another folder than eBooks. Possibly only the eBooks folder and its subfolders are scanned.

I just tried, made another folder parallel to eBooks, and moved my subfolders in it, and now the search is near 2s ! Karma for you !

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Try making the height 100%. That should work and solve the problem.

Not really, because that's 100% of the container's height, and the container is usually the <body> element, whose height is flexible and adapts to its contents (unless forced to some hardcoded height). It works with width, because <body> takes the width of the screen, but it doesn't work with height, or at least there are cases (readers) when it doesn't work.