WORDsearch released a new WS8 build yesterday, bringing the current public distribution to 8.0.2.29. Remarkably, it did not address what I consider the biggest chink the the armor of the previous public build (8.0.2.14, released on May 15th).
This "chink" is a mis-coded button on the Settings dialog that offers to let the user to set the home directory for user files used within the program, but instead, by calling the function intended for a different button, changes the root directory for the library of CROSS books used by the program. (In other words, someone apparently copied & pasted the first button object and changed the label, but never changed the onclick() method to make it do what the second button is supposed to do.)
So, you think you are telling the program to look in a certain directory for your user-created documents, but instead, you are actually telling it to look for its main library in that folder, which is not likely to work very well. I can only imagine how many non-computer-savvy people ended up with installations that just didn’t work at all after trying to change their home directory to something more useful than the installation default. Hopefully, not too many people have tried it yet.
But it blows my mind that WORDsearch would: a.) release the code initially without testing it (it was new functionality in the .14 release); b.) let such a ridiculously flawed build remain the public build for six weeks; and c.) fail to fix it in the next public update release. The problem was identified almost immediately on the Tech Support forum, so it’s not like nobody knew about it.
Some of the long-standing window/desktop management problems have been at least partially addressed with this release, and an annoying little issue where citations of Psalms texts would be referenced incorrectly (e.g. Psalms 24:1, instead of Psalm 24:1) has been corrected, but this release seems to focus mostly on trying to improve the Bibliographer and citations mechanisms.
I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m still beta testing this application, almost eight months after release.