Software support rant
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so there was a project that had a definite deadline, we needed to convert a site that used some old flash components used to display biology slides. while doing research, others decided the best route was to buy from the same company that had provided the flash components; their latest enterprise version was just a JS package. I read the documentation, oddly spread all over the place. Other than some html changes, and it only required one line of JS. very simple, got the whole site converted in a day. it tested well on Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. and I thought good enough lets publish. then I started getting reports that on iOS devices; none of the controls would work (slide, pinch, next image....) testing with a remote debugger, there are no errors, warnings or anything to indicate as issue happening on iOS. So I contacted the company (which we should of had 1 year support with the purchase) no response from the first email, waited a week (hey, maybe on vacation?) second email, no response. third email (getting angry) got a response, but they asked us to try and iOS device on one of their pages which did work. discovered their test page was using the Express version and build version was different and didn't have the options available that we needed. fourth email with the results of the findings and sent a link with our temporary site so they could look for themselves. wait a week, no response. fifth email (we are now a month and 1/2 over schedule, writing a very snarky email). No response. others found another package to try (free). it worked will on some slides but cut some of them off by 75% so it was not going to work. found there was a pro version from the first company that only had half of the features of the enterprise, but it worked with iOS. So I ended up writing the rest of the features to use this version, and it seems to work. btw: they included all versions of the viewer as -src and -min versions in the package which was nice and the license was fine with modifications as long as the original notice was part of the file. I dug into the enterprise version to see if I could figure it out, but it's around 44000 lines of code with many comments through it saying "this doesn't work in iOS", "need a workaround for iOS" and such. :wtf: it was nice that they included a flexible license, but damn that's poor support
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so there was a project that had a definite deadline, we needed to convert a site that used some old flash components used to display biology slides. while doing research, others decided the best route was to buy from the same company that had provided the flash components; their latest enterprise version was just a JS package. I read the documentation, oddly spread all over the place. Other than some html changes, and it only required one line of JS. very simple, got the whole site converted in a day. it tested well on Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. and I thought good enough lets publish. then I started getting reports that on iOS devices; none of the controls would work (slide, pinch, next image....) testing with a remote debugger, there are no errors, warnings or anything to indicate as issue happening on iOS. So I contacted the company (which we should of had 1 year support with the purchase) no response from the first email, waited a week (hey, maybe on vacation?) second email, no response. third email (getting angry) got a response, but they asked us to try and iOS device on one of their pages which did work. discovered their test page was using the Express version and build version was different and didn't have the options available that we needed. fourth email with the results of the findings and sent a link with our temporary site so they could look for themselves. wait a week, no response. fifth email (we are now a month and 1/2 over schedule, writing a very snarky email). No response. others found another package to try (free). it worked will on some slides but cut some of them off by 75% so it was not going to work. found there was a pro version from the first company that only had half of the features of the enterprise, but it worked with iOS. So I ended up writing the rest of the features to use this version, and it seems to work. btw: they included all versions of the viewer as -src and -min versions in the package which was nice and the license was fine with modifications as long as the original notice was part of the file. I dug into the enterprise version to see if I could figure it out, but it's around 44000 lines of code with many comments through it saying "this doesn't work in iOS", "need a workaround for iOS" and such. :wtf: it was nice that they included a flexible license, but damn that's poor support
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so there was a project that had a definite deadline, we needed to convert a site that used some old flash components used to display biology slides. while doing research, others decided the best route was to buy from the same company that had provided the flash components; their latest enterprise version was just a JS package. I read the documentation, oddly spread all over the place. Other than some html changes, and it only required one line of JS. very simple, got the whole site converted in a day. it tested well on Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. and I thought good enough lets publish. then I started getting reports that on iOS devices; none of the controls would work (slide, pinch, next image....) testing with a remote debugger, there are no errors, warnings or anything to indicate as issue happening on iOS. So I contacted the company (which we should of had 1 year support with the purchase) no response from the first email, waited a week (hey, maybe on vacation?) second email, no response. third email (getting angry) got a response, but they asked us to try and iOS device on one of their pages which did work. discovered their test page was using the Express version and build version was different and didn't have the options available that we needed. fourth email with the results of the findings and sent a link with our temporary site so they could look for themselves. wait a week, no response. fifth email (we are now a month and 1/2 over schedule, writing a very snarky email). No response. others found another package to try (free). it worked will on some slides but cut some of them off by 75% so it was not going to work. found there was a pro version from the first company that only had half of the features of the enterprise, but it worked with iOS. So I ended up writing the rest of the features to use this version, and it seems to work. btw: they included all versions of the viewer as -src and -min versions in the package which was nice and the license was fine with modifications as long as the original notice was part of the file. I dug into the enterprise version to see if I could figure it out, but it's around 44000 lines of code with many comments through it saying "this doesn't work in iOS", "need a workaround for iOS" and such. :wtf: it was nice that they included a flexible license, but damn that's poor support
Did you turn it off, and back on again?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
