When is IPB 4.0 ?

[Clover13]

From an investment perspective as it relates to development dollars, the practicality of doing development now in 3.4.6+ versus waiting for 4.0 really comes down to the migration compatibility and support. If you literally have to redo everything you develop now, then it's absurd to do it twice, unless your business hinges on that development and you risk losing clients without it (such that their loss cascades to future business losses that exceed your [dual] development cost).

If there is some reasonable, cost effective migration path from 3.4.6+ to 4.0 for your custom development or something that the IPS upgrade will address that might otherwise minimize that cost, then developing in 3.4.6+ makes sense. In that respect, I don't know the answer. Is there a way one can develop around the existing IPS related products (i.e. standardized patterns) such that it can be upgraded automatically in 4.0 to their corresponding new implementations? I would imagine this is the case for IP.Content as they'll need to offer some port from it's existing form to their new 4.0 implementation. That is a backbone to their product line for expansive, non-forum only sites. But I'm curious how custom hooks and applications will port, if at all, and how much manual development will be required to make them compatible.

[CheersnGears]

From an investment perspective as it relates to development dollars, the practicality of doing development now in 3.4.6+ versus waiting for 4.0 really comes down to the migration compatibility and support. If you literally have to redo everything you develop now, then it's absurd to do it twice, unless your business hinges on that development and you risk losing clients without it (such that their loss cascades to future business losses that exceed your [dual] development cost).

If there is some reasonable, cost effective migration path from 3.4.6+ to 4.0 for your custom development or something that the IPS upgrade will address that might otherwise minimize that cost, then developing in 3.4.6+ makes sense. In that respect, I don't know the answer. Is there a way one can develop around the existing IPS related products (i.e. standardized patterns) such that it can be upgraded automatically in 4.0 to their corresponding new implementations? I would imagine this is the case for IP.Content as they'll need to offer some port from it's existing form to their new 4.0 implementation. That is a backbone to their product line for expansive, non-forum only sites. But I'm curious how custom hooks and applications will port, if at all, and how much manual development will be required to make them compatible.

All solid thoughts there... and the problem is... IPS isn't telling us. One has to assume that all of our Content templates in IP.Content will break in some fashion... even just 3.x revisions did that. Many blocks could break too. Custom IP.Content databases could break or they could carry over fine.... the issue is that no one knows and IPS won't say. Forum themes/skins... at least we know they will break... IPS has told us so. So I simply bought a decent one that didn't require much tweaking to hold me over until 4.0. And even this was a slight risk... I could be using the theme for 4 months or I could be using it for 18.

[Hitori Bocchi]

What an absolutely terrible idea! Why should I waste extra development dollars/time on a product that I might not be using in 4 months? If I have a set budget for a project to be developed and followed your plan, I would essentially have to double my spending.

Is 3.4 so bad, that you can't use it for another year or two? Most companies still use windows xp...

[We are Borg]

Those of us who have been around software for as long as you have been born, have seen many people jump up and down insisting on releases being issued because of their own personal wishes.

The same people then moan when they install a beta version on a live site and their community falls over.

The software is only one component of a community and will either flourish or fail under 3.4.x or 4, so whether you upgrade this summer or next spring should not make one iota of difference.

Enjoy the software both now and in the future and don't worry about whether the staff have released a blog or not. Trust me they have it all in hand.

IPB will release IPB 4.0 when they think its ready, but people will always moan and ask for more its human nature to do so.

While you are correct that software is only one component of a community its one that is important if you fail with it the users on that site can be the best of the best they can't use the site at all. The flourish of a site when you are all ready on IPB 3.4.x you can continue to do so flourish most users of your site if not admins should not know there will be new software. But what if you need to expand your site by adding our own software will you wait till IPB 4 comes or develop and take for granted that you need to redo it again and waste resources. Most of the sites out there do not have enough cash to do just that.

Like me that is starting a new site why waste resources by buying 3.5.x learn everything and then in a few months need to redo everything again. I have 1 year of renewals set aside for IPB 4.0 but i will not waste that money on IPB 3.4.x, when IPB 4 comes i will start learning again and wait till the add-on developers and maybe theme developers have released what i need to make a launch with my website. But i need details from IPB like blogs to see what i need and can do so i can adjust my own plans this would be similar as existing websites you need to plan.

[CheersnGears]

Is 3.4 so bad, that you can't use it for another year or two?

It's not bad, but it is aging... the software just feels old at this point compared to some of the other offerings

but due to IPS's lack of willingness to share a timeline... I can't make a decision on whether to spend development dollars now or wait 6 months for a new version.

Again, I'm not looking to get out of 3.4.6 specifically... but I want to expand with some new projects and databases, but I don't want to spend the money on those projects now only to have to spend the money again when 4.0 is released in 5 months.

[Clover13]

Is 3.4 so bad, that you can't use it for another year or two? Most companies still use windows xp...

Honestly, it's not bad at all. The biggest downside I see with it is the non-responsive and full page reload architecture...both of which I believe are going to be addressed in 4.0? I know the responsive framework (UI/UX presentation wise) is, but I'm not sure how they'll handle page components and if they will be segregated in more of an AJAX/JSON widget style processing such that full page refreshes aren't required?

[Hitori Bocchi]

It's not bad, but it is aging... the software just feels old at this point compared to some of the other offerings

but due to IPS's lack of willingness to share a timeline... I can't make a decision on whether to spend development dollars now or wait 6 months for a new version.

Again, I'm not looking to get out of 3.4.6 specifically... but I want to expand with some new projects and databases, but I don't want to spend the money on those projects now only to have to spend the money again when 4.0 is released in 5 months.

A community are three things:

1. Admin (The structure of your mind is equal to the structure of your community, it makes users feel at home or leave)
2. Content (Thats why users visit your page)
3. Software (A tool to realize your "dreams")

They all act upon each other, but the users will leave if 1 and 2 are not right, not for 3 and complain if 1 and 2 are atleast acceptable and 3 is lacking something. Admins (should) have a vision of how their forum should look like in the future and the forum software is part to realize their visions, but they should not forget 1 and 2 are the most important part of their community. While 3 is developing you should take that important time to improve yourself and add additional content to your forum, not wasting it with waiting.

[CheersnGears]

And for those of us where the forum is not the primary focus of the site?

[Shariq Ansari]

Those claiming that communities are "more than just software" and recommending going w/ 3.4.X are missing the point somewhat; it's condescending to assume that just because someone is concerned with the software aspect of their community, that they feel that other aspects aren't important, for one. Secondly, if you've ever done extensive custom skinning/templating, or integrated/developed MODs, you KNOW how time-consuming that is. There's nothing unreasonable about wanting to minimize redundant, often laborious, often monotonous work, and thus conserve resources.

I like the idea of the temperature gauge that was suggested.

Incessant "Are we there yet??" nagging IS annoying, and IS almost a given. However, asking for more specifics & transparency, and asking for even a SMALL bimonthly status update w/ % completion for various modules... that's not unrealistic or inappropriate. You can argue about how you'd rather the developers spend their time developing, but I'm talking about a paragraph or a bullet list or the temperate gauge proposed above.

If IPS themselves don't have a pretty damn good idea of the % completion for various IPS4 modules that they can easily & quickly express, then there's a MUCH bigger problem going on, no?

Is it really so antagonistic or critical to simply assume that, given IPS4 is a complex suite of software, they must be keeping track at several levels of detail/specificity as to where they are with things, and to request that information - even at the highest, most abstract level of detail - be conveyed to customers on a regular interval? IPS staff have mentioned that they "go through this every time" there's a major release... okay, that's all good and well, and as mentioned, you're always gonna get a certain demographic that's irrationally impatient or impatiently irrational. Just because that's the case, however, doesn't mean the process can't be improved. You won't please all of the people all of the time, but that shouldn't be an excuse for failing to make the process leading up to major point releases & upgrades smoother. Considering suggestions that are made in earnest & might actually HELP, rather than dismissing them as being part of the usual "fallout" that accompanies upcoming releases... I think could really benefit everyone. There's room for improvement right here, right now, for THIS release.

That's what I feel myself and several others are really asking. Not "Are we there yet???" but rather "Where are we going, what is our plan for getting there, and how much further is the destination??" - reasonable questions when you're taking a long trip, so you can plan on basics like gas-ups and pee-breaks. I feel like a lot of the folks chiming in objecting to these lines of inquiry are simply being knee-jerk defensive on IPS's behalf - which is great, from a certain perspective, because it shows that (unlike vB, for example), the product & company still have a strong base of loyal, die-hard customers. However, that shouldn't get in the way of reasonable questions being asked, and it shouldn't provide a safety blanket from any & all accountability, and requests for additional information should not be mischaracterized as attacks, nor should those making them be labeled "naysayers"...

[MasterPro]

Since today is the company's 12th birthday... I guess we can go ahead and start releasing public-facing blog entries now.

Expect the first ones to go public next week. If it makes any of the naysayers in this topic happy: we have dozens of blog entries lined up in queue :smile:

There are no updates on the blog :cry:

[Rimi]

There are no updates on the blog :cry:

It's sunday

[Andrej]

There are no updates on the blog :cry:

Did you miss...

Since today is the company's 12th birthday... I guess we can go ahead and start releasing public-facing blog entries now.

Expect the first ones to go public next week. If it makes any of the naysayers in this topic happy: we have dozens of blog entries lined up in queue :smile:

[CheersnGears]

Is 3.4 so bad, that you can't use it for another year or two? Most companies still use windows xp...

No... most have moved to Win 7. XP has been at or under 30% usage for all of 2013.

[kotaco]

The uncertainty surrounds where I spend development dollars. Do I spend money on site development now because 4.0 won't be available for use until December 2014 or do I halt all current development because 4.0 will be available in April? I have plans and expansion that I have to plan around and the lack of clarity on ANYTHING from IPS is incredibly frustrating. Some of us are hobbiests and some of us run business related sites.... but in IPS's mind, theirs is the only business that matters. All I want is a timeline... I don't need 4.0 tomorrow... I just need to know when to plan for it.

Would be nice.

I'm in the same boat. We're about to do a large redesign & new features... but hesitant to do anything until a better of 4.0 timeline. I figure waiting for 4.0 will give us more time to refine any ideas ;)

Except that would be misleading for people. To quote Tom Cargill -

Same here

If people are desperate for a time-scale, why not pretend you had never heard of V4.

Then you can concentrate all your efforts into 3.4.x and then when V4 is stable you can upgrade.

After all if IPS had kept it a secret, then you would be doing precisely that.

The vast majority of IPS customers will not even be aware of V4 and are quite happy to be building their communities on their current platform.

How is it our fault if those other IPS customers are not involved enough with their software to know it is actively in development and to check on updates periodically from the site for both upgrades, maintainence releases and security updates? If they did they'd know V4 was coming and could potentially save themselves the wasted resources they will be experiencing in the duplication of their efforts along with the headache of upgrading/converting.

Myself, I have already put a deposit down with a design firm for a brand new look for my community, a fairly decent amount, I would hate to spend all of that on a skin that is going to be used at the end of 3.4's lifecycle and potentially be replaced with a completely different looking/function forum software a few months down the road. Retroactively upgrading a skin just isn't the same as having one custom built for how you need it, especially when its not just a 3.3 to 3.4 upgrade, it's a whole different structure. Along with all the other things I have in the works for my own communities development over the course of 2014.

Either way, I'll still be here patiently waiting it out. I was expecting it last year, but the wait will have to continue.

[CheersnGears]

the thing is, if IPS would come on and say "Don't expect a release before at least August/December/Heck Freezes over", I could be fine with that.... I would plan accordingly. That may mean sticking with IPS or moving to some other system, but at least it would be a direction I could work on. All IPS sites should be in developmental stasis right now. And aside from bug fixes, so should all plug-ins and theme development.

[Rhett]

the thing is, if IPS would come on and say "Don't expect a release before at least August/December/Heck Freezes over", I could be fine with that.... I would plan accordingly. That may mean sticking with IPS or moving to some other system, but at least it would be a direction I could work on. All IPS sites should be in developmental stasis right now. And aside from bug fixes, so should all plug-ins and theme development.

You are essentially asking for a release date, we don't provide release dates... we all know that we did slip up and offer a predicted release date for a beta version that was late 2013 or early 2014, (I can also very likely guess that will never happen again based on this topic alone) it's Feb 16th today, so I would personally expect something soon. Anything more than that, is asking for specific dates, and that's not something that is done.

My personal opinion for my own sites is as follows

Based on the normal testing times of new major versions in the past, if you need to make a business decision today, that would tell you that you are at a min of 3-6 months away until it's released as final, and most mods are updated etc.

It could be much sooner, it could be much later, and why there is no official answer.

[We are Borg]

....

Based on the normal testing times of new major versions in the past, if you need to make a business decision today, that would tell you that you are at a min of 3-6 months away until it's released as final, and most mods are updated etc.

....

Can we assume that if we renew our license to day on 16 February 2014 and the release is 01 September 2014 that we fall out of the boat to get the IPB 4.0. i am waiting for release of IPB 4 and plan around that but 4 to 6 months waiting would be to long but i refuse to renew the license and then need to renew again with out access to IPB 4.

[Rhett]

Can we assume that if we renew our license to day on 16 February 2014 and the release is 01 September 2014 that we fall out of the boat to get the IPB 4.0. i am waiting for release of IPB 4 and plan around that but 4 to 6 months waiting would be to long but i refuse to renew the license and then need to renew again with out access to IPB 4.

I would guess to say you would be safe, however if your goal is to only renew when 4.0 is available, just wait for it, once you see a beta released, you know the final is not far off.

[CheersnGears]

You are essentially asking for a release date, we don't provide release dates... we all know that we did slip up and offer a predicted release date for a beta version that was late 2013 or early 2014, (I can also very likely guess that will never happen again based on this topic alone) it's Feb 16th today, so I would personally expect something soon. Anything more than that, is asking for specific dates, and that's not something that is done.

My personal opinion for my own sites is as follows

Based on the normal testing times of new major versions in the past, if you need to make a business decision today, that would tell you that you are at a min of 3-6 months away until it's released as final, and most mods are updated etc.

It could be much sooner, it could be much later, and why there is no official answer.

Which is exactly why IPS is one particularly frustrating software vendor...

[Charles]

I was sitting here trying to go through all the various software I use and I could not find a single one that give release dates. Some are even more vague than we are. Some just say "we are working on something" and that's all you get.

[Clover13]

I was sitting here trying to go through all the various software I use and I could not find a single one that give release dates. Some are even more vague than we are. Some just say "we are working on something" and that's all you get.

Does Java count? :smile:

Java SE 8 Schedule: March 2014
By Tori Wieldt on May 16, 2013

The Expert Groups and Engineering Teams are working hard on Java SE 8. Here's the current state:

The target release date for Java SE 8 is 2014/3/18. Further schedule details are available on the JDK 8 Project pages.
The delay was created by focus on fixing security issuesMaintaining the security of the Java Platform always takes priority over developing new features, and so these efforts have inevitably taken engineers away from working on Java 8Maintaining the security of the Java Platform always takes priority over developing new features, and so these efforts have inevitably taken engineers away from working on J, and the desire to get Project Lambda in the release.
Project Jigsaw is slated for the next train. There will be some progress in Java SE 8 toward the convergence of the higher-end Java ME Platforms with Java SE.
Thanks to Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform Group and Java SE Spec Lead, for keeping us informed through his blog at http://mreinhold.org/blog/.

https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/java_se_8_schedule

[Charles]

Well we could do what Java does yes. Announce random dates and then push them back over and over.

Or we can focus on making the software very good.

It seems some people want us to just pick a random date from the air with the full knowledge that's all it would be: a guess. It's not something we will do. I personally believe that is very misleading to people.

Of course we have internal release targets, milestones, and road maps. We are not going to reveal those.

We really do go through this with every single big release we have ever done :) But in the end it's always worth it. I see same familiar names in this very topic getting quite worked up who did the same thing with 3.0 and 3.2 ;)

[Clover13]

And even more status detail in the particular release page...

Schedule and status

The JDK 8 Developer Preview build, number 106, was promoted on 2013/9/5. This build is intended for broad testing by developers.

The original schedule aimed to ship the release in early September 2013, but due to the recent focus on browser-related security issues that date was not achievable. The new schedule, proposed on 2013/4/18 and adopted on 2013/4/26, is as follows:

2012/04/26 M1
2012/06/14 M2
2012/08/02 M3
2012/09/13 M4
2012/11/29 M5
2013/01/31 M6
2013/06/13 M7 Feature Complete
2013/09/05 M8 Developer Preview
2014/01/23 M9 Final Release Candidate
2014/03/18 GA General Availability
Further information on milestone content and the final phases of the release can be found on the milestones page. The builds and integrations page contains week-by-week scheduling information.

http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/

[CheersnGears]

Again.. in spite of Rhett's assertion that I am asking for a release day, I am not. Even a vague "We were wrong about the beta being ready in Q4 2013, we're looking at Q2 2014 now for the beta test" would be sufficient. I'm not trying to pin anything down more specifically than that. And releasing that information is NOT a release date but a planned product timeline forecast.

Charles - You must only use IPS software for everything then. Ubuntu gives release dates , Microsoft gives release timeframes, Apple gives release time frames and then later release dates. Google gives release timeframes for Android OS. The statement that "no one gives release time frames" is fantastically untrue.

[Charles]

Release time frames are very different than release dates yes I understand that.

I fully realize you're a power user who wants all the info possible but keep in mind the majority of our clients are not power users. We get people email us all the time asking where to download 4.0 because they see it mentioned and don't bother reading that we are just talking about it at this point.

I get that it must be annoying not knowing the release schedule but we really do have very good reasons to not get too deep into release schedules and it's something we do not plan on changing course on.