Friday, November 6, 2009

Crappy Tech Support

We use VISE X to build our installers. VISE X was supposedly a total rewrite from the old Installer Vise that had been around for ages. Well, it really wasn't a rewrite, because the same odd UI bugs are still in it. Anyhoo, I reported a bug to them again about it not being able to remove all the compressed data from the project file. Rather than asking for the project file and saying they'd look into it to see exactly why the command was failing, they just said that nobody else has ever reported it, and then added his opinion that I should export the project to their xml format, and that we should not store the project in source control, but store the xml file instead. Bwuh?! That would mean I'd need to import the xml into a new project each time I built an installer. And you can't go through the normal open/save/close channels with the xml files, since those only support the project document. What the fuck kind of user friendliness is that?

I've never had such crappy tech support from a company that should be savvy to the way developers work. After all, developers of software are the people who buy their installer makers. I also suggest that they stop storing the compressed data (it compresses all the data that goes in the installer, like our app and its support files) in the project file. They should store it in an external file, must like the way any compiler does. The compressed data should not be part of the project, it's only part of the final product. It's ephemeral. He said they could not easily do that to solve my problem. Well of course they can't do it real quick like, but they should do it for a future major release. Maybe one where they fix all the stupid UI bugs and really old looking UIs.

Nothing pisses me off more than tech support that argues, fails to offer any real help, and gives his opinion on how I should be using their product.

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