Window Clippings Update and Question

Sorry for the lack of updates regarding Window Clippings in the last two weeks. I only get to work on it in the evenings and I’ve been too busy getting the 2.0 release finished to blog much more about it.

I am aiming to release around the end of the month. Here is a question for you:

Do you care about Windows 2000 support?

Version 1.5 supports Windows XP and later but I received one or two requests for Windows 2000 and want to get an idea of how many of you would really care for Windows 2000 support. It’s not a huge amount of work but adding another version of Windows does increase the size of my test matrix quite a bit.

Comments please!

© 2007 Kenny Kerr

Published Monday, May 14, 2007 5:41 PM by KennyKerr
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Comments

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Monday, May 14, 2007 6:13 PM by Seb

Looking forward to the release of Windows Clippings 2.0. Although I don't desperately need support for Windows 2000 it would be nice to have it if it's not too hard/time-consuming to implement.

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Monday, May 14, 2007 7:48 PM by ac

I'd love to see 2k support, lots of people still using it, and it supports pretty much the same GDI stuff as xp afaik

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Monday, May 14, 2007 8:15 PM by James Kovacs

Personally Vista, WinXP, and Server 2003 are all that I really require. I haven't personally needed to use Win2K in any form in a number of years. I'm not saying that others don't, but that I don't need it.

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Monday, May 14, 2007 8:49 PM by dmurillo

For me, Win2K support won't be useful and it wont matter if you support it or not.

You could delay Win2K support instead and wait after you release your first 2.0 version.

dm

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Monday, May 14, 2007 11:22 PM by NT4 Fan

I'd like to see NT4 SP4 supported. If you could support it without IE being installed, that would be great.

NT4 is still the best windows OS next to Windows 98 SE :)

# win2k support

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 7:20 AM by berni2k

Personally I just care for vista support :D

So i dont really need a win2k enabled version.

Hmm i always thought winxp and 2k are very simmilar .. *sigh*

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 11:41 AM by KennyKerr

Thanks for the feedback. I also received email notifications from others that left comments but for some reason the comments aren’t showing up here. I have the emails and will take them into consideration.

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:45 AM by Melwyn

I only have Win2K and would luv support for it. I'm also curious as to which are the API's that run on XP but not on Win2K. Maybe you could write an article on that, if you do support Win2K :)

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Friday, May 18, 2007 7:22 AM by Tom

It's pretty lame you are MVP and can't make your software work on *ANY* windows version (including Windows 95) ;), and not supporting Windows 2000 is megalame!

What example do you give to your fans? Write your software only for 1 OS? It looks like you didn't write a single commercial application in your life...

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Friday, May 18, 2007 9:48 AM by A G

Tom: Clearly you have no concept of writing robust, enterprise-quality software.

1] When you have multiple resource constraints, you need to devote your time to the platforms that most people use. Professional developers get this, you probably dont at all.

2] The kind of software that Kenny is writing does not have nice and clean abstractions that are identical across OS'es. He's dealing with a lot of issues surrounding how windows are manipulated and rendered on-screen.

3] Even if #2 was false, and it was as easy as the VBScript/ASP garbage you probably write -- There is a robustness issue that needs to be adressed. Testing and validation takes a significant amount of development time. Probably something you have no idea about. Limiting the OS'es to what most people use is not only required, its basic common sense.

4] Lastly, Kenny is not earning a living off of this. He has a passion for quality software that few of us actually have. So if he wants to make a compromise in order to save him some time so he can spend it with his family, thats his choice, not yours.

Thanks for being a moron.

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Friday, May 18, 2007 9:49 AM by Brian

Please add support for Windows 2000 is possible, even if it was termed "unofficial". A lot of consultants like myself have to use corporate PCs that are still on Win2K.

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:30 AM by Rick Brewster

I vote for nixing Win2K support. It's at most 3% of your audience, and it will consume far than 3% of your development time for development and testing of the additional code paths. And there will always be that one little beta or 0.01 upgrade you do where you forget to test in Win2K and then suddenly you'll have every Win2K user e-mailing you because something broke ... in my opinion it just ain't worth it.

I dropped Win2K support for Paint.NET v3.0 and it was a decision based purely on metrics. Only 3% or less of Paint.NET users were on Win2K, and I knew that it would add at least 2 weeks to fully validate 3.0 on Win2K (part of that time would have been just finding a Win2K CD and key). Plus, it was an ongoing tax: every time I did an update I was having to test in XP, Vista, and 2K. By dropping Win2K I significantly cut down on my testing requirements, and significantly increased my confidence in release quality.

There has not been very much backlash from this decision. Frankly, I've gotten more heat from users because XP SP2 is required (as opposed to allowing installation on XP SP1).

# re: Window Clippings Update and Question

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 11:09 AM by Melwyn

As a Win2K user any basic version of Clippings would be fine for me, rather than nothing at all. You don't need to extensively test it, etc on Win2K if it'll save you time. You can put out a disclaimer saying Win2K users should use it at their own risk. You certainly don't need to port any of the new features you would be developing onto Win2K...what you have now is more than enough. I just want something more than the windows Print Screen.