Listary 6 Development Status as of May 2018

Hi Channing,

What’s the development status of Listary 6? Do you think that you’ll release it in 2018?

Thanks,

Steve

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It’s going very well recently. You’ll see a beta version soon :smirk:

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What do you mean “soon”, One week? One Month? Or one year?

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Hi Channing,

What do you mean by “soon?” How far along are you–really? Listary is indispensable. I urge you to concentrate on marketing, in addition to development. You have a winner on your hands. You’ve created something that delivers great value, and really needs to see active development on an ongoing basis, with weekly progress reports to users.

This will hold you accountable, and give us a concrete idea of where, exactly, development stands. No one wants to invest in abandonware. Be open and transparent. Tell us exactly what you’ve done, and keep us informed every week. We can give you good suggestions and do testing in order to ensure that you deliver another great version of the product.

We’re counting on you, Channing!

Steve

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Hi Steve,

I really appreciate your feedback.

Listary 6 is rewritten from scratch. I’ve got most of the major features (old and new) working now. There are still lots of work to do however:

  • UI. The search UI needs some tweaks, and the Options UI needs a completely redesign.
  • Minor features like Menu haven’t been completed yet.

And what brings so much confusion is that there still isn’t a beta version available after such a long time. For some complex reasons (like licensing, dependencies, and encryption), I still can’t get the new Listary 6 working on a computer except my own development machine. For example, to build prototypes and iterate quickly, I use some 3rd-party components and graphics which I have developer/testing licenses, but not distribution licenses that allows the application to be distributed to end users. One of my focuses now is to replace or rewrite them.

So my plan is to post some videos about the new features next week, and then release a beta ASAP once I get it working.

I’ll also make a public roadmap of Listary. And even though I’m not a very online social person, I’ll try to be more active on social media about both Listary and myself.

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Listary is definitely my must-install software on Windows. But its popularity is not so strong due to marketing or something else.

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I have question about new features, is Listary 6 made with high DPI screens in mind? I recently bought a 4K monitor and while I absolutely love Listary it looks almost uncomfortably blurry on a 4K monitor.

Yes, HiDPI is very well supported.

Hey Channing,

I know how difficult it is to get a commercial product to market. Third-party libraries are expensive. (One lesson that I’ve learned is that you should upgrade them only if absolutely necessary, to save on expenses.) Regarding replacing a library or rewriting some of the functionality yourself, I recommend not reinventing the wheel. If a third-party library works well, the probability is that that company has more resources and time to focus on doing a good job with a particular API than you do. Integrate as much as you can, and write your own code only where there are no other good options.

Marketing is really important, because you need to make money to fund future development. And given what an excellent product Listary is, you should be making a lot of money! I know how overwhelming it can seem for a single person to both develop a product and try to market it. Different skills and knowledge are involved. Nevertheless, after you’re ready to launch Listary 6, I’d really like to see a strong marketing effort.

I know that that costs money, so you may want to try small-scale experiments to see what’s most effective–perhaps Facebook, perhaps Google, perhaps through another channel. I think it may be worthwhile to pick up a book about online marketing and see what you can do. Also, it’s not easy to explain what a product such as Listary does, so I think that making short, slick, memorable YouTube videos to show it off would be a huge help!

It’s really important to communicate with users publicly and frequently to make sure that they don’t start to believe that Listary has been abandoned, or might be abandoned, because no one wants to invest in a dead product. If you can find some passionate users–I’m one of them–ask for help with whatever you need: updating your website, moderating or promoting discussions on the forum, writing documentation, writing marketing copy, making or editing videos, etc. You don’t have to do all of this yourself, and in a way, the best people to market Listary are the users who love it. We want to support you in every way possible. You’re a good guy with a great product.

A road map is a great idea, as are the videos!

If I can be of help in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m steve.jovanovic@gmail.com.

Good luck, and thank you very much for what you’re doing!

Steve

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Excited for the videos this week!

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Nice, Channing!

You may want to ask users for input on features that they’d like to see. Perhaps you already have a list.

I think that it would be worthwhile for those of us passionate about Listary to go through a concerted exercise to define our most frequent use cases and see whether there are some user challenges that Listary could simplify and make faster through new features.

The only real suggestion that I have is to please focus a lot on RAW SPEED. Make Listary perform as fast as possible. Optimize as much as you can so that searches are as instantaneous as they can possibly be.

Good Luck, and Keep Going!

Steve

Thanks for your feedback.

Actually, I’ve collected quite a few real-life use cases from feedbacks and my own needs. I’ll try to make the process more open and transparent.

I’d be really appreciated if you can share some of the everyday tasks that you’re using Listary for or would like to use it for.

Speed and stability are always the first priority. As you can see in the videos, there is almost no delay when searching local files and apps using the new version.

Hi Channing,

Let me think about this for a little while, and I’ll get back to you.

If you’d like a minor suggestion, as an optional feature that can be turned off, you might want to consider putting keyboard shortcut hints in a small rectangular region right below the search bar to help the new user to learn how to use Listary more effectively. This would obviously just be a convenience feature until the user could learn the shortcuts, and then they could disable the hints. Such a feature might be especially helpful when using File Open dialog boxes. Or perhaps hints would appear only if the Alt key were pressed, or something like that.

Another suggestion is that upon initial installation and configuration, Listary should check to see if a custom file manager is installed in the usual path, and if so, automatically configure it as the default file manager, rather than requiring the user to type in the path and “%1” parameter.

You might want to add another default filter:
Executable
exe

That way, users can search for an .exe by typing, for example:

Ctr-Ctr exe:iTunes

Let me think about a more substantive answer and I’ll post again soon.

Thanks,

Steve

Thanks for your suggestions.

Exactly what I’m thinking. I’ll add tons of built-in tips in the stable release of Listary 6.

Again, a long-planned feature. It’ll also be added in the stable release.

You can simply type .exe something (.exe itunes or itunes .exe in your case). This works in the current version.

Hey Channing,

Cool.

To be honest, I haven’t really been able to think of anything to add. I really hope that you’ll be able to market Listary ubiquitously and make a lot of money. You deserve it.

Unrelated, I have a question. Is there a way to write you privately?

Thanks,

Steve

You can drop me an email at support@listary.com , or send a private message via the forum.

Any update regarding when a beta will be available (and the public roadmap you mentioned) :)?

How is the development going anyway?

We’re very close to a public beta. I’ll post some info soon.

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It’s been 20 days since then, any news?