@ksan: look at 2013.2109.
alex
Wow! How did you manage to fit all that through the chimney? :) Thank you very much for the hard work! The list looks extensive and great!!! I am sure we will all be busy testing for a while. Hope you enjoy a well deserved break. Happy Holidays!
Hi Alex, Great to see this update Can you please push the latest widgets sources to github Thanks Atanas
Unfortunately still there, but I much appreciate that widgets are more observed now by corona. Keep going 
Thanks and happy holidays to all corona users and staff!
@sunmills: i did not forget about it. It will be taken care of in the next iteration (which will be soon).
alex
Alex , thank you very much for your hard work. This was certainly a nice bundle with lots of fixes and improvements. It is much appreciated.
All subscribers of this thread… I hope this message finds you well. I was going through the widget bugs spreadsheet to move the items that are fixed to the new Fixed tab and noticed there are a number of items which might have been fixed. I moved the ones that I can confirm but there are a number of them which I can’t easily confirm as fixed.
When and if you have a moment could you kindly take a look and see which ones you can confirm as fixed? Please simply put a remark such as Fixed on the Remarks or Notes column and I will do the cleaning up (ie moving them to the other tab).
Just want to recognize CL staff for the good work done in this area by clearing the spreadsheet as much as possible. This will also allow them to re-focus on the remaining items. There is some good momentum of late and I hope to keep it going by making sure what still needs to be tackled is visible clearly.
Thank you very much for your time and attention. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season.
Regards,
Kerem
Thanks Ksan, your benevolent work and kind attitude are an inspiration for the rest of us to try help out the community and make Corona a better tool for business apps. Happy holidays Atanas
Still no widget fixes or any response to our pleas above. Exactly one month left now to the anniversary! To be clear to those of you who missed the earlier chatter… 11 months ago Widgets 2.0 was released to public. 11 months public use + ~4 months on the Daily Builds and here we are still struggling with fundamental bugs and omissions to this key building block.
Walter , it would be wonderful to hear from you in response to all customer sentiments shared above. Please take a moment to let us know you care and what you intend to do about all this. Thank you.
ksan - I had meant to respond to this thread earlier and it slipped through the cracks. My apologies for the delay.
Ok, here is the deal.
First of all, we take bugs very seriously. I know for a fact that we are working on fixing any serious Widget bugs actively. A bunch have been fixed in the last few weeks, and we plan on having another batch coming soon (in 1-2 weeks). That should address all the more serious bugs. As I just commented in the Composer blog post: everyone’s requested feature or bug fix is “the most important”. We have to balance things out platform-wide. That means some people will be disappointed or inconvenienced. While we honestly want to minimize that, you can’t make everyone happy all the time in our business.
Beyond that, here is what we have to say about widgets. Consider this our “official” stand on this issue:
Our goal is to provide a useful, but limited, set of cross-platform widgets. That is what we offer today and many developers have taken advantage of it in their apps. Yes, what we provide should work well and as expected (that is a given).
But we do *not* aim to provide an exhaustive set of widgets. In fact, even if we wanted to do so, it’s not a feasible goal and there is a better way to go (see below).
So if you find that you need widgets, or functionality, that we do not currently provide, you have 2 options:
-
You can take the code we have open sourced and build out that functionality yourself. This is a very real option for many developers and we know of many that have done just that. The benefit is that you will get what you want *exactly* and it will be cross-platform.
-
You can use Corona Enterprise and use any of the underlying platforms’ *native* widgets. This works very well and is proven, and gives you access to all the widgets you could get on the native platforms. We would argue that this is the best option for anyone that is serious about building business apps.
Now, I won’t be surprised if you tell me that you don’t want to spend time building your own widgets, or you don’t want to spend money on Corona Enterprise. That is understandable. However, we all face certain tradeoffs. In the context of business app platforms, Corona Enterprise is actually very affordable, especially for a small business/indie developer - and it still gives you all the advantages of Corona for non-widget functionality.
So that is where we stand. I’m sorry if you are not completely satisfied with this answer, but I am being 100% honest.
Feel free to give us more feedback. And you are always free to email me directly as well (david AT coronalabs).
David
I had no idea Corona Enterprise could use the native widgets. If I were going to focus more on biz apps that’s the way I’d go, for sure.
Jay
(I’ve often wished I were a 3-dev shop – I’d have one of those devs fork the widget library and we’d go to town on making a subscription-based alternative to the official lib. Faster bug fixes, more features. etc. Some coder-entrepreneur could take that idea and run with it.)
David,
Thank you very much for your response here. Much appreciated.
I hear everything you are saying regarding the 2 options for improvements and if you scan my posts in the forum you may note that I am doing my best to find these improvements through collaborations with fellow Corona SDK developers while also helping beginners get up to speed as well.
At this point I have given up hope for improvements and simply ask that the bugs are addressed on a priority basis.
Allow me to present some numbers straight from your bug reporting system. My understanding is that not all reported bugs are visible for some reason. The numbers I present were captured about a week ago so take this as an indicative report rather than facts as of now. Please see attachment for a simple pivot table based on the bug tracking system.
As you will see in this list, nearly 20% of all open bugs at this point in time are in the widgets area. I don’t think I should have to explain how bad this is. You argue that all bugs are important for someone out there and I don’t disagree.
I just want to see that widgets, after all this wait, are given the priority they need. At the very least, 1 in all 5 bugs fixed every day/week/month should be in the widgets area if this list is to be maintained in the current ratio which is still less than desirable. We want to see the widgets ratio in this list drop so you do the math. Currently we are not seeing 1 in 5 widget fixes on a daily/weekly/monthly basis so therefore the conclusion to draw is that we are losing ground rather than gaining.
As always, I look forwards to those promised bug fixes. Just make them come faster than we discover new ones please. The answer is in how you prioritize and allocate resources. All I’m asking for is a big push so you can clear the slate and start all over again.
You know you can make it happen. Whether you, with that I mean all Corona Labs leadership, choose to or not will be interesting to observe. The question is how would you like us to recognize the one year anniversary of the Widgets 2.0 release? Celebration and congratulations is what I’m rooting for.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Kerem
David,
Although this is a widgets 2 bugs thread, your statement about recommending Corona Enterprise for business apps intrigued me
I will skip the fact that on the web site business apps are advertised with lesser subscriptions than Enterprise.
What would be the advantage of using Corona Enterprise to access native widgets over alternatives like Xamarin, Delphi Mobile and of course the native toolsets of Apple and Google? Those alternatives have excellent visual designers, thriving third party components markets and are much cheaper no name a few.
The one advantage of Corona seems to be same codebase for Apple and Android, and the Pro price point is affordable for hobbyists and small shops.
In my humble opinion widgets need to be prioritized and fixed.
Jay, interesting thought but not sure there is much market for a third party to step in without support for Corona - would love to continue the discussion off line.
Thanks
Atanas
atanas, I look at building biz apps in Corona the same way as building games in Corona – for the apps/games where it works, it can’t be beat. But for some apps/games it just can’t be used.
If I wanted to create a first-person shooter I wouldn’t even think of using Corona – Enterprise or not. If I wanted to create a word processor I wouldn’t even prototype with Corona.
We *know* biz apps can be done with Corona because we build them. But not every biz app is a good fit. To modify my previous statement, if I were only going to do biz apps I wouldn’t choose Corona. But as long as I’m doing games *and* apps it makes more sense (for me) than other options.
Jay
David
Thanks for the response and for clarifying the “official” position…
If your option #1 is to be truly viable, realistic and safe for us, you guys need to be a fair bit more consistent (ie frequent) at updating the public github repo for Widgets2. I for one get nervous making major changes to a repo that seems to be months behind the known (in-house) code-state.
Just want to give another +1 to everything Kerem, Atanas, Jay and Alec have said in recent days here. As a corona developer of nearly 2 years now, I feel the exact same way.
I think Corona SDK is and can be a great tool, but agree there is a large need for more consistent fixes and an even larger need for more transparency between CL staff and its customers (roadmap?).
Max
Roadmap? Yes that would be encouraging.
I am afraid to write any new code now. because it will certainly mean re-writing it again soon, not to improve but retain compatibility with the product being in so much product flux. Not know what to use to avoid future impacts is really quite frustrating.
It would seem CL have been re-working more existing function, yet again. Ref Corona Labs Digest
January 23, 2014.
These re-worked facilities shows clearly where time has been spent over the last year, recently we know of Graphics 2 but also changing compatibilty such as reference points, RGB code, SetFill instead of SetColor etc, and now Storyboard is going and in comes Composer [same function, same service-new syntax- less events, but why use them all anyway] . All this re-churn must have cost considerable time and effort, and being new will incur further bugs; bugs that will need further prioritising versus widget fixes etc.
I assume the business case is strong…
At the moment my app, which uses Storyborad extensively, overlays , tableviews by the gross and large use of color texts and color fills will basically almost have to be changed over 40% of the code just to stay up-to-date. My only hope is that my staying very much back level [i.e not downloading the public release any more] I can avoid these un-necessary changes to my apps. It actually is working extremely well. I have worked around most bugs I have found and happy with ‘my lot’. But will it stay that way? I will hang on back level as long as possible…
Here is another +1 on the points made by Kerem, Atanas, Jay and Alec. I too feel the same way.
If only there could be a real push to sort out all the problems by the anniversary. Im not talking about the enhancemant and new features that people have requested (though they would be nice). I am referring to the widgets being made a stable platform that we could depend upon.
I understand exactly where you are coming from. I too have been working on a major app for several months (not my day job) that is composed of almost entirely tableviews and overlays, linked by story board with widgets making up the majority of the interface. I seem to spend half my time finding work arounds for bugs, the removing work arounds when the bugs get fixed, only to do yet more work arounds for more bugs. As I have progressed with the app, every time I have started using a new widget there has been problems.
The thought of having to rework for composer is filling me with dread. From past experience, the new bugs that will come with composer are pushing me to the edge. Staying back several versions probably wont help in my case as I need the bug fixes (when they come) in the new versions.
Its interesting that you mention Roadmap. I made few references to it recently in a post as well. Search as you might, once proudly and publicly displayed Roadmap is nowhere to be found these days. Even when it was prominently displayed, often times things that had no presence on it were implemented and released just like that! It became such a joke, a liability that it eventually got hidden I suppose…
In any case, this “shoot from the hip” attitude has been around for quite some time now. I don’t think it will change. In the meanwhile it is such a shame that this great platform can’t reach its full potential due to all these issues we face on a regular basis.
It is also sad to see that despite all well meaning feedback and opinions shared here we have yet to hear from Walter. How hard is it to step up and say what you will do to alleviate all this pain?