The original concept...
It was back in 1997 that I got fed up of so many unlabelled videos. Something had to be done about it!
VideoList was born! Written in BBC BASIC V, it offered many of the facilities present in the RISC OS version, as well as a few things that will be recognised in the Windows version too. But it had a problem. It was slow. Tediously so.
The 29th of November 1998 is when the very first version written in C was first compiled. It didn't do a lot as most of the code was yet to be written, but I celebrated with a (few) glass(es) of wine anyway. It was a start.
VideoList developed over the next few years. Yes, years. My mind was spread across many things and I wasn't interested in selling it at this point. I have several beta testers, gave copies to friends, that sort of thing. And so VideoList got more and more features. It is amazing what was possible with a 4Mb machine running the new Desktop and a graphics display (thus leaving maybe 2.5Mb for use?).
May 2002 is when I came over to France. I contacted a RISC OS company about VideoList
and they said they would be prepared to sell it "at cost" (about £10, to cover
making the package and postage). I agreed to this as the RISC OS market isn't one you'll
"get rich quick" in! My SCSI card died, and two months later I picked up a SCSI
CD writer for 11 euros, but no SCSI card!
I used the time to improve VideoList, to rationalise a few things, to tidy up the self
upgrade logic... All sorts of little tweaks. I also updated the user guide. This was the
first time that the installer would not work on a basic 1Mb machine. I did have a
jump-through-hoops build of the installer, but I decided that it might be better to ask
for a 2Mb machine as you can't do much in 1Mb these days. Of course, on a 32Mb RiscPC
there was loads of space!
March 2003. I also rewrote the upgrade fetcher, direct socket calls. Not bad. The
printer code is now pretty snazzy. The package was made up and sent to the company who
shall remain nameless. Because they did not reply. I followed this up with a letter and
several emails. All of which went unanswered.
Now - if you were a company and somebody was offering you a product to be 'sold'
to cover costs, wouldn't you figure that's a pretty good deal? I was even prepared to
offer support for people even though I, personally, wouldn't see money from the sales of
VideoList.
And so VideoList sits on my harddisc and the harddiscs of several of my friends. I have mentioned it in my Frobnicate magazine a few times, but I have had no takers.
Whoa! Dude, chill out!
It isn't all doom and gloom though. I may have drawn a line through the RISC OS version, but VideoList is not dead. Far from it. Now that I am mostly using a PC these days, I decided that one of my first projects would be to resurrect VideoList. To include all of the stuff that I felt was missing from the original (because VideoList under RISC OS predated DVDs!). To add features to make it more 'modern'. And, in Visual Basic 5, I began the creation of this new VideoList - aptly named VideoList 2 - on the 7th of September 2004. Using VisualBasic is certainly a departure from programming in C. You spend less time worrying about the eccentricities of the operating system (and Windows has so many eccentricities it is borderline insanity), and instead VB hides a lot of that stuff from you. VideoList has come along in leaps and bounds, even though there have been times when nothing was done with the project for many months, as I have lots of things "on the go", look at my software index to get an idea of what I mean...
One of the main "directives" of VideoList (and VideoList 2) is simplicity. You can do a number of things by clicking, by pressing keys, or by menu options. It is simplicity in that you can use what feels natural to you. There are numerous menus offering the main facilities, all neatly organised. Big buttons allow you to perform the main functions, but only the main functions ... as having used Microsoft Word for several years, I still can't tell you what all those buttons on the toolbar are for! The extended information editor is hidden away until you need it. Tooltips and What's This? help is provided. It is simple. Undaunting. How software should be.
This time I am not going to use an agent. So there will be a delay when you order and no fancy website to enter credit card details into. But you get to buy directly from me. No middle person, no go-betweens, none of that rubbish and nobody to ask for more money from you. It'll be just you and I and the postal service.
Well, this brings us up to "Present Day", as they'd say in the movies.