General issues and enhancements

[Tanel]

First of all I want to thank James and Eric for this very promising piece of software.

I've been using (and keeping an eye on) Viscosity for Windows since 1.3.2 - this with the intention of rolling it out on a larger scale. 1.3.5.1 is the best so far but there are a couple of things that I would like to see addressed before deployment.

Issue #1:
The application-language is a mix of English and my native language. Yet, system locale ("Language for non-Unicode programs") is set to "Engligh (U.S)". It would be good if Viscosity could respect that. A quick (and not so pretty) fix would be to let the user choose the language to use. This was not an issue in 1.3.2 (or 1.3.3b if I recall correctly).

Issue #2:
Graph for showing used bandwidth only works sometimes. This was not an issue in 1.3.2 (or 1.3.3b if I recall correctly). Not a huge deal, just an annoyance.

Enhancement #1.
If this is not already in place, implement arguments /disconnect and /connect "profile name" for the executable. If the user is already connected to profile a and /connect "profile b" is run, prompt the user "You are currently connected to Profile A, do you want to connect to profile B instead?". Also implement /y[es] for omitting user confirmation.

Enhancement #2.
The default icon set for Windows is, in my humble opinion, terrible - especially on small laptops with high-resolution displays. Why not use "Leopard Colored" as the default instead?

That was all for me, thanks in advance!

All the best,
Tanel

[Eric]

Hi Tanel,

Thanks for the feedback! To answer your questions:

Issue #1 - This is a common request and we will probably end up adding a drop down box for language selection as it has now been asked for a few times. Unfortunately there are a few ways to get System language/Locale from Windows, not one central location like most other operating systems, and many people use them in different ways (for example many people who have their local set speak the native language, but only have an English version of Windows).

Issue #2 - We've heard this one but have not been able to reproduce it. We will have a closer look and see if we can spot the problem.

Enhancement #1 - This is a feature slated for 1.3.7, we're hoping to squeeze it into 1.3.6 though. Some other projects have regrettably dragged us away from Viscosity of late, releases with new features have been far between, much to our own dissatisfaction.

Enhancement #2 - Widely debated this one. We get many people saying they're ugly, and others saying they like how they fit in with the other Windows default icons. The good news is though if you choose to make a bundled installer, you can set the default icon for anyone you deploy your package too. More information on that here - http://www.thesparklabs.com/support/vis ... viscosity/

Cheers,

Eric

[Tanel]

Thank you for the fast reply Eric, it's always reassuring to see developers taking an active interest in feedback.

Issue #1 - I think using a drop box for language selection is a sound choice. However, what your reply does not explain is why the application in it's current state presents a mix of languages - some lines are in English while others are in (in my case) Swedish. I understand that the Windows API is a mess but surely you only do a single function call to determine the language to use at start-up and then use it through-out the runtime? Or is this just a side-effect of the language-files not being completely translated and hence some lines are still only available in English?

Issue #2 - Sounds good, I wish you the best of luck with this one!

Enhancement #1 - That is good to hear - I am looking forward to this one!

Enhancement #2 - As always, aesthetics is not an easy thing to deal with. In general I think you've pulled it off very well. I wouldn't even say that the default icons are ugly - they're just not functional. Try to explain to an older man/lady using a 12,1" laptop that the status of the connection is shown by the very small coloured circle in taskbar. That is something I cannot do with a straight face. As you mentioned, being able to choice icon set when doing a deployment is good enough for me - but you might want to think it over.

All the best,
Tanel

[Eric]

Hi Tanel,

We only speak English here and translations in most have been done by the kindness of volunteers. Only a small fraction of Viscosity has been localised to Swedish in Windows, what has been done so far was pulled from the Mac version and they only share about half the strings, this is the same as a couple of other languages as well.

Regards,

Eric

[Tanel]

Have you thought about open sourcing the language files and make them globally editable through a HTTP-frontend (and obviously with a revision history)? That would make it a lot easier for people to help out with translations.

While we're at it - one spot in the Swedish translation is incorrect. It says "Ansluta" where I suspect it should say "Avsluta". Ansluta = Connect, Avsluta = Quit.

[James]

Hi Tanel,

Yes, we'll most likely move to something like Transifex or 99translations at some point. Such tools didn't exist when Viscosity Mac was first launched, and so our backend systems are still designed to operate just with distributed .strings files. Hopefully we'll be able to upgrade to something more modern soon.

Thanks for the translation fix.

Cheers,
James