New Text Editor – SSI Web 8.0.2

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In SSI Web version 8.0.2 we are happy to announce a new and improved text editor! The new text editor should make typing HTML, SSI Script, and Unverified Perl a pleasure.

The new text editor rocks!  You are going to wonder how you ever lived without it.
Check out the examples below.

HTMLHTML Highlighting

HTML is now highlighted.   As you type HTML a list of HTML tags will pop up.  As you type the opening tag it will automatically insert the closing tag.

SSI Script

The example above shows how constructed list logic now looks.  Notice how the SSI Script function names are colored blue.  SSI Script function help is built-in and shows up as you type.

Perl

The example above shows some Unverified Perl in skip logic.  Notice how the Perl code has syntax highlighting.  Help will also pop up helping you with your Perl functions.

Miscellaneous

  • Lines are now numbered which should help you identify certain parts of your code.
  • Blocks of text can now be highlighted and indented.  Reverse indent can be done with shift tab.
  • Edit Undo and Redo have been vastly improved.
  • Search and replace has improved.  You can now search on Regular Expressions.
  • Go To Line, Capitalize, LowerCase, and UpperCase have been added to the Edit Menu.
  • Code Folding has been added.  This allows you to hide certain parts of the code.
  • Screen splitting has been added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MBC v1.0 Released!

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MBC is now officially released.  Many thanks to our beta testers who have provided a lot of feedback and ideas on how to improve the software, as well as our lead tester Murray Milroy who has spent many hours here in the office finding the most remote and hard to find bugs.

We hope you enjoy your experience with MBC, and we hope to see many of you at the Sawtooth Software Conference!

http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/products/mbc/

The links to the beta builds will remain for a short time until all the beta licenses expire.  After that they will be removed.

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10 days till MBC

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I hope you’re getting as excited as we are about MBC.  We expect the final to ship next Friday, March 9th.  We’re holding on to it since we’re still testing and making changes, but we feel it is very robust and powerful.

When the final comes out next week, mainline support will take over.  Aaron, Brian, Jeff and Nate are getting up to speed on it.  If you have questions about how to use the software or MBC methodology, they handle that.  You may still email me about potential bugs or features in the software.  You can send that to walt@sawtoothsoftware.com.

If you a beta user who has not updated to the more recent releases, I would encourage you to do so before you install the final.  As the beta period has progressed and the internals of the software have changed, we have changed the layout of your project files here and there.  We did it behind the scenes so that you hopefully wouldn’t notice, and your work would not be affected.

When the final comes out, it doesn’t make sense to keep all this code in there to upgrade early beta project files.  So it will be removed.  What that means is that if you have a project you created in 0.9.5 and you open it in 1.0, it may report that the project file is corrupt or another error.  We assume that most of you have kept up with the release cycle, and so this won’t be a problem.  But if you have an old project you haven’t visited in a while and you want to keep it around, open it up in 0.9.14 so it will be converted to the most recent data layout.

Your beta licenses will continue to work until April 1st.  After that the beta will revert to demonstration mode, limited to 50 respondents.  To purchase MBC, please contact our office.  We are currently taking orders.

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MBC v0.9.14 now available

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It may seem like we are doing a lot of releases lately, and you would be correct.  We want to make sure you have all the benefits of the fixes that are happening in MBC.  In this release, we have fixed an issue with combinatorial simulations where draws were not being weighted.  Note that the results are correct as to using unweighted draws.  We do believe that weighting draws will improve results.

Most of the bugs being found at this point are cosmetic, and we have Murray working hard to find what he can.  If you notice an issue with the software, please speak up so we can get it fixed in time for the final!

Download at:

http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/releases/mbc/MBC_v0_9_14.exe

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MBC v0.9.12 available

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We have a new build for you:

http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/releases/mbc/MBC_v0_9_12.exe

The software is getting more polished as we march to completion.  This version address various small issues.  There is however a larger albeit nearly invisible change regarding concurrent estimation of models.

If you have worked with lots of dependent variables and set them all running, you might have noticed that nearly all of them ended up running concurrently.  Some of you have even encountered out of memory messages.  That’s because we were relying on the default Windows method to decide which models to run concurrently.  Normally this would be fine, except that the memory your models use (especially HB) can get large.  Really large.  Gigabytes large.

The other problem is that from a performance standpoint, you should only be running as many models as you have processors to run them.  I have a quad-core processor and each of them have Hyperthreading, so I have 8 logical cores.  For best performance, I should only be running 8 models at a time.  There is a complicated explantion for this that I will spare you.  But the method we were using allowed all that could run to run.

So we have written some new code that will better manage concurrent estimation.  To do that, we acutally compute in advance roughly how much memory we will be using.  Usually that adds less than a second to the over time to estimate a model.  We then add the model to the queue, which looks at how many processors/cores are in use and how much memory is available.  If you have the free resources, it will run the model.  Otherwise, it should wait until there are.

The change should be transparent except that you may notice that fewer models are running concurrently.

Thanks and enjoy the new version.

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Multiple Scenarios Now Available in Our Online Simulator

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Today we updated the online simulator with the ability to have multiple scenarios!  If you would like to add more scenarios to your project, just click on the new “Manage Scenarios” link on the Define Products page.  On the Manage Scenarios page you can edit, delete, or go to any of the scenarios defined in your project.

Please let us know what you think about this new feature, as well as any other simulator feedback that you may have.

MBC v0.9.11 is now available

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As the development has finished, we have been able to devote more time to looking at various issues in the software.  We’ve been able to fix multiple issues and at the same time make minor improvements here and there.  Many of these improvements have been suggested by the beta testers.  For example, when you specify your models and you want to move multiple rows up and down, you can now select them all and click up instead of doing them one at a time.

Among the more important fixes in this release:

  • If you were doing a constraint such as “category 3 is preferred to category 1″, the constraints may be misapplied.
  • If you were exporting an Excel simulator with a conditional dependent variable, some respondents may have been clipped off the end if they were exlcluded by the conditional dependency.

We continue to be on the path for March.  For those who are not beta testers but wish to preview the software, MBC will operate in demonstration mode without a license.  Demo users are currently limited to 50 respondents.

There are still slots available for our MBC workshop at the Sawtooth Software Conference.  Please join us in Florida!

Please download the new version here:

http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/releases/mbc/MBC_v0_9_11.exe

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