Yeah, so it’s been awhile, and I am sure you probably have been wondering where I went to, with no updates since forever (see Jan 7th). ThunderBrowse isn’t dead, just temporary stalled until I can find out how to deal with school work.
Now before you start, I’m not giving up on this project nor am I leaving, I am just saying that updates are going to be a bit slower then they used to be (which was at least once every week) due to school (not like school teaches any helpful technical classes that will apply to my career I want to go into [Video Game programming]).
The only thing my school offers that is technical is “How to use Microsoft Word”. Welcome to the Seattle School District. Yes, that’s right. I’m in high school, where they dump pointless work on you and assume that you have no life. Thanks guys. I hate you too. I also hate how you didn’t close our schools during that incredibly icy day where it was impossible to drive on roads.
The last time I was working on ThunderBrowse, it was on the new tab system. That didn’t work out as well as I hoped. In fact, I broke the entire mail backbone. But at least tab browsing was a bit more like Firefox (I break gDBView with the new tab system).
And yes, I know I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Halo 3 when I am free (somehow). If you care to watch me kick ass (or see me fail miserably [when I get teamkilled, play shotty snipers, or something]).
Anyways, this is a salute to all who have stood by me, said how much they loved the product, submitted a bug report, and flooded my email box every now and then (though it’s starting to thin, have I done something wrong that I haven’t reproduced in my test profiles and builds?). This is also a great thanks to the one person who donated (Guru). From me to you, I like to say, Thank you.
For those who clicked on my ads, I am happy that you see value in bringing in some cash to the project (currently this is my only job, I work more during the summer).
When I think about it, I realize, how lucky I am that I was able to be blessed with this idea. I can really really thank the guys at LifeHacker (especially Gina) for writing that post that made me research how to make browsing work.
I am also blessed with the trials and the tribulations of what came with this software. The long fights on mozillazine somewhat made me move to rewrite parts of ThunderBrowse and to accept the fact, you can’t please everyone. I’ve made friends and several enemies. Bard, was there when I had the evil troubles with tabs, he showed me his beta tab code. The timing was excellent on that part.
The press coverage that ThunderBrowse got was quite rare. It’s not everyday that your new extension hits frontpage of C|Net. Especially when you did nothing to get it there.
To Seamaiden and the people at AMI (or whatever the abbreviation is these days), nice job restarting a dead project (which is hard to do). And I say thank you for being a number one fan.
The guys at babelzilla, though not at the same speed as me (which is the speed of light) somehow managed to cope with my crazy deadlines and demands. How they did it, I don’t know. But it must have been a miracle. Thanks for all the translations. And embarrassing bug point outs.
To my betatesters that somehow your’s or my ISP now blocks me from sending emails to you now (thanks Comcast) due to the idea that it could be spam. The criticism, which made me want to yell at you, made me think of what to add or remove. Thanks for that.
Though my family will never understand the concept of freeware and see it as a stupid flawed concept (and all the fabrications I had to make up so I wouldn’t get a “How to make money with your ideas” lecture from my dad again [and the why freeware will never work]), somehow I saw fun in the confused faces.
A quick tidbit though on why I went with freeware.
- I’m a student, as anyone would know, students are cheap
- Freeware is easier to manage then non-freeware
- Freeware = more people and tends to get better press
- Making an extension available if someone pays is a harder thing to do. ThunderBrowse is available on warez sites already. I don’t know why though. Those files are infected with viruses (I saw one already that launches an exe file).
- Younger people prefer it, and will very rarely ask their parents to buy something online (like software) for them. If a young person had a credit card, this would be different
For everyone I missed, questioned unfairly or yelled at, I am deeply sorry, I can be impulsive sometimes (especially late at night), and I apologize.
I’m glad you all love ThunderBrowse (I love it too). And I am thankful that I had all of this to help me move on throughout the learning environment that came with this project.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have Spanish and Physics to finish.
*ZING!*
