Titanium Community Questions & Answer Archive

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Not a question - an observance..

Seems to me there is very little actual support from anyone to anyone here at appcenter.

I am becomming very leery of this program and setup. Why?

I have questions - and I find them by looking here and Googling - and what do I find - lots of other folks with the same problems, and no answers anywhere….

Has the company gone belly up? Developers left and gone elsewhere? Is it time to seek an alternative?

Bill

— asked November 18th 2010 by William Gilligan
  • lack of support
1 Comment

  • > Has the company gone belly up? Developers left and gone
    > elsewhere? Is it time to seek an alternative?

    If you take a look at the link below you'll see that they have just had a bunch of venture capital and taken on a load of people so I hope the short to medium term will see a lot of improvements. What I also think is that they need to introduce a basic paid support tier for single or hobbyist developers because the existing paid support fee is putting a lot of people off.

    http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2010/10/appcelerator-announces-9m-in-funding-paypal-partnership.html

    — commented November 19th 2010 by Alan Bourke

4 Answers

  • There are a lot of questions in this forum and I feel there are a lack of answers for a few reasons.

    1. Many questions have already been answered, but people are not using the search feature.
    2. This QA format isn't very conducive to answering questions, many questions just get lost. I find the format annoying.
    3. Some are difficult to answer since they are poorly documented.
    4. Some questions are related to bugs.

    Personally, I answer more questions on the QA here but as a result of Appcelerator's product, I'm too busy.

    — answered November 19th 2010 by John Welch
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    2 Comments

    • The other thing is there is a paid support option.

      — commented November 19th 2010 by John Welch

    • John - very good points!

      — commented November 19th 2010 by Paul Dowsett

  • William

    You may have missed it in all your "looking" and "googling", but at the top of the main Q&A page it states very clearly, "Community Questions & Answers". The clue is in the name! ;)

    As such, it relies on people forming a community to support one another.

    You can get support from Appcelerator with response times in line with what you were expecting to find here very easily, if you subscribe to one of its support packages.

    Despite this, you will often find Appcelerator staff in here. For proof, why not click on Kevin Whinnery's or Don Thorp's names in the "Top Experts" list. I saw a post from each of them only today.

    This forum can only function properly on a "give and take" basis. Both are considered contributions. The way it can never work is if people simply come "looking" and "googling". What's even worse, is when people come "looking" and "googling" and critisising the efforts of others.

    We were all new Titanium users once, and "once" was not very long ago. It doesn't take long to get comfortable with it but, at first, it can be tricky to get your head around. You obviously have some experience, so why don't you actually do something positive and help those people?

    Now, back to the main topic (ie the "Questions" and "Answers") - what questions do you want answers for, exactly? I'd recommend raising a separate thread for each, to make them easier for people to follow, when they come "looking" and "googling" in future. ;)

    — answered November 19th 2010 by Paul Dowsett
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    0 Comments

  • I understand I may ruffle some feathers, and my comment is not meant to offend. But I do have some experience, and my first line of defense is always the same - don't go running for help, try to find the answer - see if others have had the same problem, and then work thru what they found.

    My questions honestly are beginner with titanium, It seems great - but all the beginning questions just don't seem answered. If they are, then its this forum setup and not the users.

    Questions like - I get an error about java preferences failing. What should I do?

    • Kitchen sink launches - but never displays the icon, etc - what should I do.

    Like I said Titanium seems great, but time is short. If I have to spend hours seeking answers on the basics, then I start looking elsewhere (apmobi for example). I understand when higher level questions aren't answered - but from my newbie point of view - it truly seems many many questions on this forum are just ignored.

    Yup - paid support is an option - and will be used - once I find the platform I will be using. Titanium is the second one I am looking at, with three (outside the straight android and iPad SDK) I am researching for a series of upcoming cross platform projects.

    Bill

    — answered November 19th 2010 by William Gilligan
    permalink
    1 Comment

    • Just because your questions relate to things that have happened to you at the start, does not mean they are "the basics" necessarily. The ones you mentioned did not happen to me when I started, for instance.

      If you use the format properly:

      • start a new thread by asking a question with a meaningful topic that people can quickly understand and will easily find in the future
      • tag your post properly
      • provide your platform and sdk version
      • if you need to paste code, you make sure it is simplified, tested and working, so that someone can just drop it into their app.js file and it will run first time

      …then I am sure someone will be able to help you to your satisfaction. It will be interesting to see whether you return the favour(s).

      — commented November 19th 2010 by Paul Dowsett

  • This is indeed a community support forum. Us helping ourselves. So I'm not at all surprised if there are a lower number of company responses than perhaps you might be expecting. I answer as many questions as I can, but frankly I find an unusually high amount of questions being asked that I think the person should be able to answer themselves simply by searching or reading through documentation. This is not a personal reply to you and your stated current issues, it's just an observation in general.

    I am involved in other support forums supplying answers as best as I can there as well, and I usually tend to give more answers than take. (ex: http://www.lumdev.net/blog/224 )

    However, I would like to add that I do not like this particular support software. It doesn't seem as useful as other readily available open source solutions. That may be getting in the way of developing a richer community knowledge base - if I'm not fond of it perhaps others feel the same.

    Todd

    — answered November 19th 2010 by Todd Trann
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    0 Comments
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