Development has been going really well on this feature.  I was able to utilize a lot of the Asp.Net AJAX toolkit to make this feature work.  I’ve got it doing the actual ratings, but I haven’t written the code yet to filter based on ratings.  That is going to be the hardest part of writing this particular feature.  At the speed that development is currently going, I could see this feature being done by early next week.  I have a few other features that I want to write before doing the 3.1.8 release, but expect the release to go out the door in the next month.

We have taken everyone’s answers into consideration and have determined by popular vote to create a rating system as the next new feature. This rating system will allow an Ideal BB.Net user to vote on a scale of 1-5 stars for every post they read. A user will also be able to filter topics by stars, enabling only the specified star rated posts are visible. Eventually, this rating system will be incorporated into the search function.

I’m still wanting to go through the code and upgrade a lot of the code to .NET 2.0 features, like using Generics instead of ArrayLists, etc..  But that stuff is going to have to wait until I finish some of those new features we’ve got planned.

As far as Visual Studio goes, the new develpment environment has a couple of interesting features including some nice SQL tools for doing schema comparisons and generating change scripts.  It could be useful.

1. Do a clean release build in visual studio
2. Copy the files to a new directory
3. Clean out the web.config files
4. Remove read-only on the files
5. Remove custom avatars and uploaded files
6. Run codeveil on the DLL’s to obfuscate them
7. Create directories for each of the builds CORP, LITE, etc..
8. Run SQL DIFF on the new database and create upgrade scripts
9. Zip up each release folder
10. Copy the files up to the web server.

Using Visual Build Professional, I’ve automated almost all of this so that I can press a button, relax with a cup of coffee and watch everything automatically put together.   Its really easy to use and works very well.  Visual Build Professional.

We also released a new version of the Ideal Science web site.  The updated web site will help us distribute serial numbers which are now required for all Ideal BB.NET products.  Rather than using the license files to unlock features, we are going to give you a serial number which you add to the web.config file. 

We’ve also added a new Wiki for product documentation.  (http://wiki.idealscience.com.)  Going forward we will be placing all documentation there.  This will help us keep our docs more up to date and allow the community at large to edit them.

We sent out a poll recently and based on some of the early results, it looks like the next big feature is going to be a buddy list.  If you haven’t sent in your results yet, now is the time to do it as we are going to close the polls soon and issue a winner for the iPod.  With the popularity of Facebook and Myspace I can see why folks would want a buddy list.

We will be upgrading our forums tomorrow to run the latest version of Ideal BB.NET so that you can try it out before you download and install it.

With the 3.1.7 release will be a new version of the Ideal Science web site which will allow you to manage your serial numbers and maintainence contracts. 

Lastly, the 3.1.7 release is going to be ready for some big new featues that we’ve got planned.  Which features get implemented first depends on the answers we get from the recently published questionaire.  I’m hoping the reply by email wins, because that is a feature that I’m excited about creating.  I’ve got some great ideas for it.

I do have a lot of neat features planned for the 3.1.8 build.  Among them is a rating system for rating posts and users which will also incorporate a mechanism to search based on those ratings.

Lastly is a better profile system for users that includes buddy lists and some nice AJAX mouse hovers to view profiles of members without needing to open a new page.

I’m hoping to have 3.1.7 wrapped up in the next two weeks.

Now Xheo has a new product called DeployLX which would allow us to change the way we license our products. Instead of using a separate license file for each customer, we can now deploy with a serial number. So when you purchase one of our products you’ll get a serial number which will unlock it and allow you to get the full feature set. When you need more features (like more boards) we’ll send you a new serial number.

This serial number can be stored in the web.config, registry or a file on your HD. For now we’ll probably just use the web.config since it allow portability between a dev box and a production box.

We are experiencing several problems with this system as it caused quite a hit on our performance. Xheo’s technical support says that their products shouldn’t cause that kind of a hit, but I’m not so sure. We’re trying to work with them to get these issues resolved, but they’ve been less than helpful. Hopefully we’ll be able to resolve it soon so we can get 3.1.7 out the door. I’ll keep you updated.