Skritter is getting on in age and size. It’s been over three years since we started this project, more than four if you count Nick’s honors project where he developed the stroke recognition algorithm that’s quite central to the system. Given that we’re no longer just a scrappy startup, but a company with people who depend on us to be accessible and in good working order for their studies, we’re changing the way we work on the site to increase up time and minimize bugs.
Up until now, we’ve been putting up changes to the site as soon as we make them for everyone to have. The problem is that these changes produce bugs. We have to make changes to improve the site, but when we move things around or introduce new features, bugs invariably crop up, and sometimes they can make things unusable for some, which at this point we very much to avoid. Making bugs is part of the programming process and can’t be entirely avoided, and doing extensive in house testing would slow development to a crawl.
So to solve this problem, we’re going to start having two versions of the site available at any time: a stable version and a beta version. The stable version will not have the latest updates, but it will be less apt to break. The beta version will have all the latest goodies that Nick and I are working on, but don’t be surprised if things act in ways they shouldn’t. It’s up to you to decide what you would prefer, but know that if you choose to be a beta tester, you can always switch back to stable if things get hairy.
The beta version will constantly be on the move, and is where we will introduce new features and non-critical bug fixes. It will work in monthly cycles, where at the beginning, for the two or three weeks after a newsletter, we’ll announce and implement the next version’s upgrades, building up to the following newsletter when we’ll aim to release them. As the release date approaches, changes will slow, and we’ll focus on making sure everything is working right. Beta testers, it’s up to you to provide feedback and bug reports to make sure the stable version of the site is as good as it can be.
So how is this different from alpha testing? Alpha testing was good for focusing on particular things we wanted to make sure were done right or we knew were particularly prone to error, but the way it was set up, it does not suit our needs now. To alpha test something, we had to purposefully build it to be available only to alpha testers, and errors could still affect everyone as changes produce tangential bugs. So alpha testing has been turned off and replaced. Since all changes will, by default, go through the beta testing process first, testers will find themselves with a lot more to try out than ever before.
To become a beta tester, go to your general settings and mark yourself down as one, or simply go directly to beta.skritter.com or beta.skritter.cn and confirm that you live for danger and excitement.