I shouldn’t have to comply with nag screens to make them stop.
Annoying the customer into doing what you want them to is a good way to drive away customers. This is the sort of abusive, borderline malware behavior that drives free antivirus software fashions and I am absolutely fine with just pirating the software when my license expires if it’s going to treat me like a free user no matter what I do.
I recognize that there’s a valid reason to nag by default, but users absolutely should be able to uncheck a box, perhaps with some sort of ‘not recommended’ warning, to disable that. There is not an either/or choice between not making sure customers know that updating ASAP is recommended or not updating; everyone can have their cake and eat it therefore that should be the case.
I do understand your point here. Most people appreciate the update notifications, but we can always do a better job. Thank you for the valuable feedback.
I paid for Boxifier and IMHO if there is even the slightest risk ( even for one file out of the 6gb current Dropbox space availability I have ) that an update by Dropbox will cause the currently running Boxifier to clash with Dropbox in some way that causes files issues then as far as I am concerned there MUST be an update notification to say that an updated version should be downloaded and installed.
If others want to risk losing or trashing files then let that be on their own head - give them an option to disable the update notifications and clearly show on the app that disabling the update notifications may potentially leave the user files at risk.
I understand that the paid for version, and did when I tested the original trial version, effectively ‘piggybacks’ on DropBox and relies on the correct integration with the current version of the DropBox application and the associated API… so correct versions are essential.
I really hope that Boxifer has to be updated only when there is actually proper need to update, not when only Dropbox stable version number is bumped up. I am quite sure there is no always technical need to update Boxifier when Dropbox has change/fixing something inside Dropbox. Am I completely wrong about this?
I hate all that indexing and so on my 1 TB Dropbox after updating Boxifier (or Dropbox maybe).
Boxifier needs testing to make sure it works with the latest Dropbox once that is released.
It is better to prevent than to repair any potential damage caused by a future Dropbox update. We care about your files and keeping them safe, even if this means Dropbox would need to re-index them once in a while.
Actually I was really interested in your opinion on this and I preferred asking instead of assuming, as it was not clear from your question what you had in mind.
We can not know in advance whether a future Dropbox version will break integration with Boxifier and cause damage or not. That’s the reason why current versions of Boxifier are not allowed to work with future/unknown versions of Dropbox.
When a new Dropbox version is released, that needs to be tested to make sure it works with the current Boxifier.
Therefore, to answer the original question from @neko:
An existing Boxifier version is unable to know in advance if there is “a proper need to update” when running with a newer/unknown version of Dropbox. It needs to be tested first. That is why the suggestion was unclear in the first place and the reason why @Razvan asked for more details.
That being said, we are continuously working on improving the update mechanism. For now, the best solution we found was to prevent current version of Boxifier from running with a newer/unknown version of Dropbox and notify when an update is available.
Some of our users have firewalls installed or other pieces of software that sometimes prevent Boxifier from checking for updates and that is why we prefer to block newer/unknown versions of Dropbox until a new update is installed. This prevents potential damage.
I understand the update procedure, it’s a safe way to assure there is no damage to our files, but isn’t it possible to integrate an automated test like this:
do all operations possible, check outcome …
if a test fails, follow standard procedure, if all tests pass, allow continuation of boxifier
@bogdan: I understand very well the concern of “prevent any problem rather than fixing them”.
Still the re-indexing time is quite annoying (especially in my case where I am constantly uploading a host of fast-changing small files), plus I can imagine several cases where people will not want to update
security intensive workplaces where software has to be validated before install
big amount of data, slow storage, expensive storage bandwidth, as you can find in medium to big companies, where indexing time will be a real pain
IMHO the best compromise would be to add a simple option to opt-out of updates, as many softwares do, with a clear warning on the risks.
Maybe you can also rely on dropbox version numbers, assuming that minor versions will be less likely to break compatibility.
Note that I would be satisfied with a “hard block updates from both Dropbox and Boxifier”, through firewall or the like; but most people would probably not.
Can notifications of required updates be distributed by other fashion than tooltips in the tray?
We run Boxifier as a service on Windows server, and we are missing the notifications because noone uses that as a desktop.
So, until automatic updates can be opted into, can you provide an alternative alert service (at a minimum by email) for our IT to be notified when an update is required?
This is still happening. I will be pirating this software instead of buying it next time. I don’t pay for software I can’t order to stop harassing me and interrupting my games and movies.
Talked to the team. Turns out this has been implemented, but not surfaced in the user interface. It is available with Boxifier 1.5.25 which will be soon pushed to the update channel.
