February 20th, 2009
admin
Whew - it’s been a busy week! The devs have fixed a ton of application issues, as well as introduced some cool new features. The complete list includes:
- Fixed a bug in the Marquee edit screen whereby some gibberish was being displayed instead of the desired content when the user chose to display additional information and selected the sub-menu “All of It” [Ticket #137]
- Fixed column editing in Report screens so that if you change a column title, then delete that column, the name change is retained (in case you decide you want to re-instate the column later). [Ticket #136]
- Fixed some layout issues with Map exports - particularly with the sizing and layout of the market ‘bubble’ that pops up when a map marker is clicked. [Ticket #138]
- Added additional confirmations to the Connector manager to prevent users from accidentally deleting their Google Docs connections. [Ticket #144]
- Fixed Subscription model so users can now ‘downgrade’ from a paid service account to a Free account at will. [Ticket #145]
- Introduced Scatter and Pie charts. Both chart types allow you to select the data column to be used in your chart directly from the Edit screen.
- Enhanced all of the Export edit screens to work against an in-memory snapshot of the underlying data set. This accomplishes two things:
- You’re database (or RSS feed / spreadsheet) is no longer taking a hit each time you reposition or edit a column name in the edit screen(s), and
- The editing of reports and exports is, as a result, much, much faster.
- Fixed the Chart Edit color picker. It’s now much easier to use, remembers the last color you used, and allows you to directly input the hex value of the color you want to use (if you need that much control).
- Canceling an account now completely deletes all Connectors, Reports and Exports associated with that account. (We were ‘expiring’ the account in case users wanted to re-instate it - but we’ve learned the Facebook lesson. :)
- Removed PayPal as a payment option (we can hear the groans already). But the truth of the matter is, for a monthly subscription service (like Bluyah) very few people we’ve spoken with would consider using PayPal as their payment method. We already have a great merchant company for handling credit card payments and didn’t wish to pay PayPal’s monthly fees just so we could accept a handful of subscriber’s payments. Of course - if enough of YOU want this feature in the future, we will revisit it at that time.
Version 0.4.4 of Bluyah was launched late Friday night (thus the reason I’ve taken so long to post the announcement). This release introduces some really great features, chief among them is support for Google Docs spreadsheets. The complete list of enahncements / bug fixes is:
- Fixed bug with ‘bad decrypt’ on user Connector passwords [Ticket #105]. All connector passwords are encrypted and that encryption algorithm is tied to user’s own Bluyah account. We discovered in testing that if user changed their account password, their connector passwords would become unreadable. We’ve fixed this.
- Fixed a bug whereby changing a column’s displayed name in the Report Edit screen would prevent user from retrieving any columns they had previously removed from the report. [Ticket #134]
- Fixed an error whereby if a user tried to hack the URL for a report export, the app would display an internal error rather than a friendly message informing them that the export they were looking for could not be found. [Ticket #85]
- Clarified and posted the Refund Policy for new accounts. The Refund Policy is now part of the Terms of Service.
- Fixed an IE7 only issue affecting users attempting to login from the wrong sub-domain. Now IE7 users are auto-routed to their correct sub-domain - regardless of which domain they initiated login. [Ticket #39]
- Google Docs support (Yeah!!!). Bluyah now can read any Google Docs spreadsheet provided it meets the following prerequisites:
- The email address you use to access the Google Docs account is a ‘GMail’ account (hosted domain accounts are not yet supported - but coming soon!)
- The spreadsheet is in a tabular format with columns and rows. Columns without named headers will not be imported.
- More intuitive Map Editing screen. The map editing screen is now WYSIWYG. You see what the map will look like as you’re defining which data you want to display on the map. (See Fun with Google Maps for a more thorough explanation of the features)
As always, feel free to Let Us Know what you think of the latest feature set. If you want to see some additional features in Bluyah, please submit a feature request! If we don’t know about it, we can’t build it.
We pushed an emergency patch to prod (tagged 0.4.3) to fix some problems with password encryption. If you experience any problems with your database connectors, please let us know.
Additionally, we fixed a small problem with forgot password functionality whereby a user who had authenticated their account, but never actually logged in, was resent an authentication token (instead of a forgot password token).
Keep your eye on this space - we have some exciting new Map Export features coming soon.
Version 0.4.2 of the Bluyah application has been pushed out. Several important enhancements in this release include:
- Improved outbound email service (Ticket #93). Thanks to a wonderful post by Paul Dowman, outbound emails are now being routed through a trusted relay service. Even better, Yahoo and Hotmail are no longer rejecting our emails. (props to Alex for bringing this issue to our attention)
- A simplified Login process (Ticket #89). Users will no longer have to login “again” if starting from the wrong sub-domain.
- Application upgraded to Rails 2.1 (Ticket #88)
- Charts export now includes 3D column and Stacked Column charts (see Enhanced Charts). In addition, the chart management screen allows you to control more aspects of your chart, like axis text color, background color, whether or not to display the chart legend, and more granular control over the location and display of the report title.
- Map export has been considerably enhanced. The Map management screen now allows users to swtich between geocoding and not geocoding. If your data set includes latitude and longitude information, the simpler interface will allow you to quickly plot marker points. If instead your data includes street, city, zip code information, the application will ’geocode’ the address automatically as the map is being generated. See Mapping Basics for a more detailed explanation.
- Finally, we’ve tightened the security all around, to include enhanced password encryption.
Feel free to contact us with any feedback you may have.
Version 0.4.1 of the Bluyah application is now live. Changes include:
- Fixed issue where IE7 users were not able to get to appropriate login screen when starting from the wrong sub-domain. [Ticket # 80]
- Fixed another issue with Atom/RSS feeds that was causing application to croak if it was unable to validate the URL of the feed before saving it. [Ticket #49]
- Outbound email notifications are now consistently being sent. If you’re not receiving emails from Bluyah, check your spam folder first. [Ticket # 75]
- Fixed a handful of spelling errors throughout the site (who lost the dictionariy .. err … dictionary ??) [Ticket #81]
- Added the Marquee Data Widget (detailed here).
ver 0.4.0 of the Bluyah code has been pushed to production. This releases fixes the following:
- CA-signed SSL certificate has been installed on server - so users will no longer need to manually accept our self-signed certificates when signing up - and again when logging into their custom sub-domain. [Ticket #30]
- Some more prep-work for Google Docs access [Ticket #57]
- Fixed serious flaw in login process where by users who had never activated their account were prevented from resetting their password or retrieving activation code. Additionally, if user’s email address belonged to more than one account and one of those accounts was inactive, server error would result. [Ticket # 78]
- Fixed bug in Atom/RSS connector to account for feeds that may not include the full range of allowable elements [Ticket # 49]
- Fixed template to remove some debug text from the main Connector screen (oops!) [Ticket # 71]
