The Impetus To Move Forward - Sun, 19 Dec 2010

I’ve added a few features I think are important to Behold that will be out in the next release. In so doing, and talking about them on this blog, I received a few emails from some people already using Behold. They said that the new features sound great, but they’d really like me to get version 1.0 out and continue on to Version 2.0 because editing in Behold is what everyone really wants.

The point they made is that Behold is good enough right now to be a Version 1.0. I thought about it, and yes, despite my view of all the little flaws I see (I shouldn’t be such a perfectionist), it does a fair bit as far as a basic GEDCOM browser is concerned. And it has many capabilities that are unique among all genealogy programs.

Okay. My arm’s twisted. I say uncle (very appropriate for genealogy) and give in. From this point on, until Version 2.0 is released, I’m going to delay all new features AND all enhancements to Behold, other than what is absolutely necessary to get to Version 2.0.

There are two items that will stay on the agenda however: I will continue to fix any and all bugs (i.e. things that work incorrectly) and I will update the documentation/help file which is too many versions too old already. Now that will move my schedule up considerably, and if all goes perfectly well, we could see Version 2.0 within a year. See my new schedule on my Future Plans page.

Once the basic stuff is done (including 2.1 Virtual Merging and 2.2 Photos), I have like 100 things in my list of “More Things that WILL be included somewhere, somewhen, somehow …” Maybe what I’ll do at that point is let all the people using Behold vote on what they’d like to see next. We’ll see when I get there.

But first, I’ll have to get the current beta out, and then finish up the bugs and help and Version 1.0. On my mark, get set, go!