Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Any closer to another pre-release?

Yep – seconded here. I’ve just lost yet another auction due to bidwatcher bugs. I have used it for years, and I don’t think it has ever been free of quite obvious bugs. If I could find a suitable alternative, I’d drop it like a shot.

Morgan – I think what is required is to simplify the code base drastically – all I want it to do is read the items in My eBay, and let me snipe them – nothing else. Why dont you ask the users what features they use? I bet 60 percent of the code base is never used. If you stripped out the cruft, just think how much easier your life would be maintaining the software. Or just give up? Say the software will no longer be maintained? At least the users would know where they were.

Cheers

Tim

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Is anyone ever going to fix this software?

Good to hear that you appreciate the problems Morgan, I love the software, and have used it for years, but it has been unusable for me in the last 6months or so here in the UK. Many and varied bugs, culminating with the infamous FP problem.

I have downloaded the source, and have considered forking, and creating jbidwatcher lite, but that does seem like a lot of work, and will probably be much simpler if you do it Morgan!

FWIW, my suggestions to lighten the sw development load are:

• get the community involved – i’m sure there plenty of people, even if the aren’t very familiar with Java, who would be happy to help beta test, etc
• simplify the code, make the code base much smaller, with the aim of making it simpler to maintain. Ask the users what features they use, and strip out the rest. As far as I am concerned, all I want is a simple utility that will read the items I am watching in My eBay, and allow me to snipe. Nothing else.
• improve the logging & diagnostics, to make the action of the program more accessible to the community. It would be good to get to the situation where users can report to you exactly what the problems are, and you don’t have to spend time recreating test cases etc. One simple thing I would like is for the intermediate format auction items to not be compressed, so I can easily read them.

Anyway, just a few half baked thoughts – but the main thing is, I’m sure there are plenty of people who want to help – just offer them some encouragement!

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / Jbidwatcher induced heart failure

Just had a Jbidwatcher snipe failure with “unknown error” – the item went for £26, and my max. was £42. After 10mins or so of swearing, the email arrives from eBay to tell me I have won the item. It seems the Jbid failure was after the bid was made.

Any ideas? My heart can’t take that again!

Cheers

Tim