Anyone spot the new redesigned micasaverde.com site?
Looks like a nice new change, good job MCV!
Ditto, looks great!
Agree. Well done MCV.
It does look pretty clean, well done.
here’s the link if you don’t want to use the keyboard (no link in forum, MCV icon should be link)
While we’re on the subject of direct links, here’s the support link ;D
Yeah, nice job with upgrading the website MCV. Sales are 1st priority?
And what about upgrading / fixing the FW for VERA? Customer support 2nd priority?
JOD.
Site looks/runs great. I guess this means there is an official distinction moving forward between MiCasaVerde and MIOS. I thought at first that MCV was simply migrating into MIOS.
Is it just me? I get no scroll bars on the new site using IE, so most content is cutoff at the bottom of the window. Scroll bars show up in Firefox. Maybe someone forgot to do some cross-browser testing???
It is not just you.
IE8 doesn’t work.
And there are taps, I can’t use either in IE8 or Firefox.
Micasaverde/Vera microcosm moment, right here.
I’ll agree with those of you who say the new website is an improvement over the terrible one they’ve have for the past year or more.
But gatorbaw nailed it. This site is awful, both graphically and functionally. Amateur work, just like in UI2, UI3, and UI4.
Hi,
Why this statement CMRancho? What’s not good with out new website? And why are you calling UI4 an amateur user interface? We know there are some thing to care of when it comes to UI4, but most of them are sort out and working great?
Why are you always complaining about MCV? Haven’t we provided help, support?
I love the new website and I thing it has a nice, professional look. But that’s me…
Thanks!
[quote=“mcvovidiu, post:12, topic:166682”]Hi,
Why this statement CMRancho? What’s not good with out new website? And why are you calling UI4 an amateur user interface? We know there are some thing to care of when it comes to UI4, but most of them are sort out and working great?
Why are you always complaining about MCV? Haven’t we provided help, support?
I love the new website and I thing it has a nice, professional look. But that’s me…
Thanks![/quote]
Re: the web site:
- The navigation menu at the top doesn’t work right - the drop-downs are not set up correctly. The transparency of the drop-downs is set wrong making it difficult to read the list of links.
- As the main window cycles through all the big beautiful pictures that illustrate how wonderful life will be with Vera, there is a blue line of text that looks like it’s a link to more information. It isn’t.
- The page that comes up from >Where to Buy>North America has this stack of logos that are sized so they can be seen from space.
- The claims about the product are even more unrealistic and outlandish than they were before.
- There’s grass at the bottom of the page.
I won’t go on.
Re: UI4:
- When a light is on the “On” button turns from a faded blue to a faded green. When it’s turned off, the “Off” button turns, um, green? When I scan down a page of a million devices, scenes, imaginary parent devices, etc., I can’t tell what is on, what’s off, what’s running, what’s not.
- To view an image from a camera, you click on, um, the setup wrench. Really?
- Any change of settings requires a “Save” but the save is all the way at the top of the page. Scroll up, scroll down, scroll up, scroll down, etc. The save should happen automatically or be accomplished from within the dialog box you’re already in.
- The stuff I use the least often is at the top of the page which means more scrolling. I can’t rearrange plugins and toolbox to the bottom to make it work better for me.
- I can’t hide all those dang parent devices, or the scenes that don’t need to be visible and just clutter up my dashboard.
- The My Mios landing page looks like it was designed in the early 1990s. And not by a designer.
- I can have my door sensor turn on the light. I can’t tell it to only turn on the light when it’s dark. Is this a new, totally unexpected way to use a device? I don’t believe it is, and I don’t think version .001 should have been released without it.
I won’t go on.
Re: Help, support:
- The kind of help I need is devices that work consistently and a master controller that doesn’t freeze up and require that I drive home to cycle the power so my lights don’t stay on all day. I need an HSM100 to work as it’s intended, with control options specific to the device. There’s no reason I should have to know that I must use “1 byte dec” and not “2 bytes hex”. Give me a break. This device has been on the “Supported” list forever, and it still won’t give me battery level.
- I need good documentation.
- I need a fast response from MCV tech support. I have requested support twice and both times it was days before I got a response. When the house is broken, this doesn’t cut it.
- I need consistent, reliable information. I thought it was a great idea to have a forum category called “Company Blog” where we could read frequent updates about what was happening behind the scenes and what the future holds. I was wrong.
I won’t go on.
You don’t like the grass?!?!?! It feels good when I run my mouse pointer through it on a hot day.
Seriously though, I see some of your points, but it does look pretty good for a new launch. How many times have you seen “page coming soon” or content filled with Latin, etc., they at least have a pretty complete set of content.
As far as outlandish claims, I’ll have to read deeper, the three that slide show across the homepage seemed fair to me. You have to take into account that it is marketing (aka sugar-coated) lingo and that they have to design the page for what is to come in the near future. We all know UI4 needs some cosmetic fixes and some functionality tweaks, but I guess I am still overjoyed to be off of UI3. I’m using Chrome to view both currently.
BTW I had a crash last night too (Vera1 1.1.1062) and I plan to turn on Verbose Logging and try to catch a crash and submit a ticket. Vera does need some king of self-heal or self reboot feature, as no matter how tight the code is Murphy’s Law dictates if you need to rely on anything …well you know.
[quote=“shady, post:14, topic:166682”][/quote]
[/quote] Murphy’s Law dictates if you need to rely on anything …well you know.
[/quote]
What do we know?
Anyway I don’t mind the new site. I’m sure that MCV will fix the problems. The issue I don’t get is why Quality control does not see the problems before release.
Boy yours crashed I thought you had one of those crashproof Veras that I’ve heard about but not seen…
Being on Beta testing edge, as you are too, we have to expect some crashes and do our best to log and report when and how they occur. Luckily for me my crashes have been few and far between, which of course makes catching them and for MCV fixing them a bit difficult.
BTW I checked the new website on IE8 at work and it works fine (scroll bars and everything). Some of the graphics are a bit jaggy in the large center picture at my 1180 x 664 resolution on my Vizio TV, but that is an odd resolution I know.
CMRancho, I’m sorry you’re so disappointed with everything we do. There’s some conflicting requests here. Keep in mind our team doesn’t have web designers; we always contract out that stuff. We only have coders on staff. We always hire the best design team we can. In this case, for the new micasaverde.com website we hired a highly rated U.S. design agency to do everything here on-shore. So far we’ve gotten very positive feedback on the site.
You’re right that we didn’t pull our developers off our core product (Vera) to have our internal staff do QA testing on the micasaverde.com site. We left it to the design agency. But, that’s because we want our core developers to stay focused working on our product. Don’t you agree that’s the right priority?
As far as your complaints… Some of them seem valid. But many are just matters of opinion and there are opinions the other way.
For example, your #1 complaint is that you can’t tell which lights are on and which are off. In the UI, lights that are on have a bright yellow light bulb icon, lights are off have a dim, gray one. Most people we talked to thought that was a good way to see what’s on and off. You obviously disagree and think that instead of reflecting this status in the icon, we should have changed the “active” color of the action buttons. To be honest, we discussed this, and, again, the majority thought it was more intuitive to have a consistent ‘selected’ state to a button (ie the green lit button).
As far as the other complaints, we discussed many times where to put the toolbox and mios market panels and discussed moving them to the bottom. But, the majority in our focus group felt it was better to keep them in a fixed place but make them collapsable so you can hide them if you don’t want to see them. So that’s what we did. As far as the save, yes, we did discuss doing iframes to make the banner at the top with the ‘save’ button stay visible at all times. But that meant there was more scrolling to see your devices when you’re on a small netbook with limited screen size.
I appreciate your feedback. But, since most of the items are matters of personal opinion, I don’t think it’s fair to blast us over them.
As far as reliability… Whenever we have a customer with a system that crashes, that is always #1 priority and we stop everything else. Two weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon a customer in Mexico reported that when he setup 2 Vera’s with separate Z-Wave networked across a bridged ethernet network with more than 100 devices, the unit ran out of memory and crashed. We had 2 programmers come in over the weekend and work 12 hour days both days and by Monday morning, we had a new firmware for him that fixed the issue. So, while many of the subjective complaints you make, like the green buttons, etc., do go into the suggestion box and aren’t always acted on, that’s not a sign of horrible customer service. That’s just because we know we can’t please everyone and if we change it other people will complain. When it comes to crashes, occasionally customers have run into a reproducible or persistent crash where his Vera is down and won’t come up. To my knowledge, in every case, we have had all programmers stop everything and work overtime until the problem was fixed, and I’m not aware of any customer that has been stuck in that situation for more than a day or two. Bottom line is that we’re doing the best we can…
I’ve only got 7" to play with (wait, that didn’t come out right…) 
Thanks, for thinking of the netbooks, sometimes I think I am the only person using one.
CMRancho: but other than that, how do ya like the new site? 
MCV,
This is off topic of Re: Website redesign but on topic as far as your quote.
“When it comes to crashes, occasionally customers have run into a reproducible or persistent crash where his Vera is down and won’t come up. To my knowledge, in every case, we have had all programmers stop everything and work overtime until the problem was fixed, and I’m not aware of any customer that has been stuck in that situation for more than a day or two. Bottom line is that we’re doing the best we can…”
I don’t know who you are on here as 'micasaverde" but I’m assuming this is Aaron. If I am correct, you know the issues I have had. Ovidiu asked you via email to log into my Vera 1 UI2 to debug which never happened, I sent you numerous emails that went unanswered…MCV prompted me to buy a Vera 2 UI4 to solve my problems with Vera 1 UI2 which I did which did nothing but give me twice the problems. I’m still waiting on a fix to both units!!
If you want me to post the correspondence between MCV and myself to back up my above statement I will. Let me know when I can get someone to look at my system.
JOD.
Ps. I think the website is FINE. ;D