Here are 6 things that you should check on your programs:

Code signing

Signed executables are important at many stages nowadays. Even though the customers usually wouldn’t notice the actual signatures, they will notice the reduced warnings that a signed executable causes. This warnings do not only come from Windows during the installation, but also from antivirus programs and other security software which rate the “trust” of each program. That’s why you should not only sign your installer, but also all ‘.exe’ and ‘.dll’ files that you’re installing.

High-resolution icons

I never noticed this one myself until a customer told me. The 16×16 and 32×32 icons in my programs looked pixilated and outdated. You can add higher resolutions to your “.ico” file with the freeware IcoFX. Be sure to keep a backup of the old “.ico” file because not all IDEs allow linking the new “.ico” files. As a workaround you can use the command-line tool ReplaceVistaIcon (available on Codeproject) which can replace the “.ico” section in your executable with the new “.ico” file.

Common controls 6

The new version of the Microsoft GUI will allow applications to have a “nicer” look, for example the slightly rounded buttons. You can activate this by adding a manifest file with a “Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls” section. You can either specify the manifest file in your project settings or use Microsoft’s manifest.exe command-line tool.

UAC

Many customers now have Windows versions with split rights accounts. In normal mode a lot of things will fail, like installing a service or creating a shortcut in the startup folder. If your program requires full admin rights for any of its actions, you should be aware of this. If the function fails you should either give the user a **helpful** error message or handle the UAC “elevation” to full rights automatically.

You can detect the type of account your program is running under with GetTokenInformation and TokenElevationType. It is not possible to elevate a running process. You have to start a new process with ShellExecuteEx, specifying “runas” as verb.

Progress bar

If your program includes any sections that display a progress bar for some time, then you should support the Windows 7 feature of displaying the progress also in the Windows task bar. The details greatly depend on your programming language. Use IID_ITaskbarList3 as a starting point.

Larger fonts

The screen resolutions have become so ridiculously high, that it’s difficult to read the text on the screen. That’s why many customers have activated larger fonts in Windows. This causes Windows to automatically scale up all dialogs. This works nicely with most standard dialogs but can cause problems with custom controls. Check your application while large fonts are activated.

Thomas Holz is the owner of ITSTH and the author of outlook tools to synchronize, remove duplicates and use boilerplate texts and writes in his devblog, if he still has too much time after optimizing the website.

6 Things to Check on Your (Old) Programs is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

The chart shows year of joining ASP and records only those members not supplying the ASP with a URL we could publish. The expire/active determination was made as of Aug. 2010. So, for members joining in 2002, 17% of the expires did not supply a publishable URL whereas 9% of the still active members have not supplied a publishable URL.

This same pattern holds up year after year: the odds are greater that not supplying a URL to ASP when joining leads to lapse of ASP membership (the main contributor of which is business failure).

The message here is do not treat your site URL like a secret. Advertise it in all appropriate venues.

Help your business fail … or succeed is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

A public obituary may be found at:

gazettextra.com/obits/2010/jul/31/michael-dulin/

and as was requested, the ASP has made a donation in his name to both WBEZ Radio, Chicago, and the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

Mike will be sorely missed both for his devotion to the ASP as well as his wit and character as well.

A sad passing is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

Shareware was one of the surprises of the early personal computer industry. Who would have thought that you could make a living from software paid for on the honor system? Make it publicly available, invite people to make copies of it and give them to their friends, and base your income prospects on a little notice asking people to send you a few dollars if they found the program useful.

Michael Swaine, Dr Dobbs, January 2000

Early shareware pioneers including Andrew Fluegelman, Jim Knopf (Button), Bob Wallace and Marshall Magee proved the commercial viability of the shareware concept, reportedly making millions.

The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) was formed in 1987 to promote shareware as a business model and to further the interests of shareware developers. Today it has over a thousand members. But times have changed. It is no longer necessary to distribute software by sharing floppy disks or to pay with a check in the mail. Many consumers, fairly or not, have come to see “shareware” as short-hand for “amateurish”.

Today, the Association of Shareware Professionals announced that it was renaming itself to the Association of Software Professionals, following a unanimous vote by the board. It has widespread support from the members in doing so. It also follows in the footsteps of a number of other organizations who have already dropped “shareware” from the name, including SIC (formerly ‘Shareware Industry Conference’, now ‘Software Industry Conference’) and ESWC (formerly ‘European Shareware Conference’, now ‘European Software Conference’).

I approached a number of shareware veterans to find out how they felt about the name change. I asked them:

• How do you feel about the ASP name change?
• Do you think the term ‘shareware’ is still one that small software developers should use?
• The try before you buy model first popularized by shareware is completely standard now. But, unlike early shareware, it is usually limited in some way until you pay. Do you feel the idea of shareware won or lost?

Here are their responses:

• Jim Knopf (Button)
• Marshall W. Magee
• Nelson Ford
• Rob Rosenberger
• Paris Karahalios
• Jerry Medlin
• Rosemary West
• Gary Elfring
• Paul Mayer
• Mike Dulin

I don’t like the new name.

Jim Knopf (Button), one of the earliest and most successful pioneers of the shareware model, his Buttonware company reportedly grew to 35 employees, a broad line-up of shareware products and a $4.5 million gross annual income before its sale in 1992

The consumer software industry has changed and I applaud the ASP for adjusting its strategy as well.

I believe we’ve seen the shareware concept brought forward over the years and the original concept has sustained the test of time. At the end of the day, people like the option of trying something before they buy it.

Marshall W. Magee, Founding President of the ASP,
he released Automenu in 1983 and became one of the first shareware authors to make more than $1 million dollars in sales. Automenu is still for sale

Shareware was invented as a means of taking advantage of the underground sharing of software (usually copyrighted commercial software, but sometimes, small utilities and code fragments). In the early days the great majority of this sharing took place on BBS’s and user groups and then came shareware distributors who reached a broader and more business oriented audience.

I suspect that the distribution methods which shareware was supposed to take advantage of are all but gone.  Obviously, there are still shareware sites online, but I don’t know if they generate significant sales for programmers.

The idea of shareware won if the programmers made more money with it than they did without it. My shareware company, PsL, not only got software out to users all over the world, but we took phone (and later Internet) and mail orders for hundreds of shareware authors, so we had a pretty good idea of how different programmers were doing.

Of course, there were many, many thousands of shareware authors, all of them expecting to make a lot of money from their software. Supply and demand tells you that just can’t happen. The people who made little or nothing tended to blame shareware, despite the fact that some authors made a lot of money, and a few made a LOT of money.  One of the most successful shareware programs of all times in terms of sales was WinZip, and it was marketed in the purest form of shareware – completely unlimited, nothing sent to the customer but a receipt.

Nelson Ford, ASP founder and member since 1987, founder of the Public (software) Library – the largest commercial library of public domain and shareware software

I’ve always advocated an evolutionary model for shareware. Our quick adaptability gives us a decisive edge when we compete with “the big boys” who can’t make decisions. If our evolution has led us to the point where we should drop the word “shareware,” then so be it.

And we really can make a case to drop the “shareware” moniker, given the fact everyone uses the shareware sales model these days. We now distinguish old, non-evolved sales tactics as “oh, that’s one you can’t try first” software. So why not change our name to keep up with evolution?

Consider the analogy of the telephone’s evolution here in the U.S. When wireless handsets first came out, we described them specifically as “cordless phones”. When radio phones first came out, we described them specifically as “mobile phones”. But the concept of wireless is now so pervasive (except in the U.S. government and military), that we distinguish the original non-evolved phone as a “landline”.

At some point you gotta admit “Homo Erectus” isn’t good enough to describe this evolved species. Let’s call it “Homo Sapien”. At some point you gotta admit the same thing for shareware. If the membership feels we need to give it a new name, then it’s time to give it a new name.

I’ve always been against crippling because I believe in the “pervasive” theory of software distribution. In particular it explains why antivirus software is so pervasive – John McAfee wanted his name emblazoned on every desktop in the world and he made it so. His non-shareware competitors quickly realized their traditional non-shareware sales channels didn’t hold a candle to McAfee’s aggressive electronic giveaway scheme.

I think shareware achieved a big win with its “time-limited fully functional” sales pitch. In the early days, shareware authors were constantly looking for better ways to make a sale. We had so many different people trying so many different techniques that we were bound to come across the better ways of doing business. Those who limited the product’s functionality were perceived as not trusting their customers; those who committed the user to a decision were perceived as simply making the customer give a definitive answer (“yes I want it” or “no I don’t”).

We see this philosophy in other “shareware” realms, like auto dealerships. Some people take a dealer’s car home with them for 24hrs, then they have got to buy it or return it. I once took a pickup truck home to make sure it fit in my small garage – why wouldn’t I want to do the same thing with a piece of software before I invest money in it? That’s a big win for shareware in my book.

We won in 1997 when Microsoft released a 120-day fully functional copy of Office.

Rob Rosenberger, ASP member since 1988,
publisher of the Shareware Compendium

The Shareware Industry Conference changed its name to the Software Industry Conference in 2007. Twenty plus years ago, when many (most?) PC users were still hackers, the term “Shareware” had wide spread recognition. Although, even then, there was some confusion between shareware, freeware, crippleware etc. Nowadays, the term is nebulous at best, and very misleading. It’s mainly used to describe “everything one can download from the Internet” (as an aside, a very useful experiment would be to ask 100 teenagers and 100 business people what they think of when they hear the world shareware).

The SIC had been created to bring together “small” developers, all of whom, at the time used to be software authors distributing their products as “shareware”. The industry changed over the years, the term shareware lost its token value and many SIC attendees use a number of different marketing venues for their wares, so the term “shareware” was no longer describing the conference.

I think as a concept, the shareware distribution model was instrumental in convincing mainstream software vendors that users are more likely to buy a product, if they get to try it first. And, let’s not forget that not all products distributed as shareware were fully functional, even in the old days. That was one of the early requirements for ASP membership, but a lot of us fought for years to use that requirement as a convincing argument to get users to choose ASP member products, and not other “shareware” products which had limited functionality, were time limited, etc.

I think the name change has been a long time coming. The ASP has come a long way since the days when I was a member, and I think changing the name to “Software” will help the association grow, as it will probably attract developers that may have felt there was a perceived stigma associated with “Shareware”. Though I don’t have any hard statistics, I think similar to the SIC, many ASP members distribute their software through many different channels, one of which is shareware, so for the association name to reflect “just that marketing channel” was restrictive.

Paris Karahalios, SIAF co-founder, Software Industry Conference board member and co-founder of Trius Inc

I’m not sure anyone outside the ASP will notice the change, but I’ve found the word “Shareware” less recognizable over the last few years, so it is time to drop the word from the organization name.  Fortunately, the ASP can still use the same acronym. Words come and go from our language and the “Shareware” has had its day. The “try before you buy” model is now the most common way to distribute software.  As Rob Rosenberger said a few years ago “we won”.

Jerry Medlin, involved in shareware since 1984, founder of Medlin Accounting software

The ASP name change reflects a long-standing reality. This is the software industry, and ASP members use many different marketing methods. By adopting a broader, more inclusive name, we are not rejecting the past, we are living in the present and welcoming the future. Developers who feel that the term “shareware” is still an important part of their identity can go on using it with pride. But it’s not really necessary. “Try before you buy” is the norm and no longer needs any explanation or special terminology. The focus should be on the product, not on the marketing technique.

Shareware was always about the process of experimentation. From the very early days, developers tested different customer incentives, and over time adjusted their methods to better work with their evolving user base. The core philosophy behind shareware, try before you buy, has never changed. Steve Lee’s catalog used to bear the slogan, “Someday all software will be sold this way”. It was a bold statement at the time, but he was right. One by one, the biggest companies in the business started doing it our way. It was the small, independent developers who set the standard, and we continue to do so with benefits like niche-marketed products and personalized customer service that most large corporations still can’t match.

Rosemary West has been involved in shareware since ‘the late 1980s’, she has held various board positions in the ASP and ESC

Shareware is just a marketing concept and is as subject to change as software is. Just as my first CP/M program won’t run under modern Windows computers, shareware, as it was originally conceived, doesn’t work the same way now.

Shareware was developed as a way to market software by people or companies that had no other practical way to reach their target audience. With the development of the internet, the major barriers to directly reaching your customers, no matter what your size, have been removed. At the same time most software companies offer free trial versions of their software.  So for all practical purposes shareware as a marketing concept no longer exists.

The ASP lost the war to market the term shareware to the general public years ago. It was never much of a war in any case. The ASP never had a budget to practically address that issue in any case. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again- your customers don’t care what term you use to describe your software. Spend your time marketing your software, not arguing about what to call the method you use to sell it.”

I think it is about time for the ASP name change.  I don’ think “shareware” is a term developers should use. The term shareware can have one of three possible connotations in a customer’s mind:

1. They have never heard of it so at best it confuses them.
2. They have heard the term and have a negative association with the word.
3. They have heard the term and have a positive association with the word.

Unless you believe that the vast majority of all people fit into class 3 above, you are better off avoiding the word altogether. If you don’t use the word at all you have no negative connotations or confused customers.

The original idea that shareware could not be limited or crippled in any way was an accidental by-product of the first meeting of shareware authors. This group of shareware authors wanted to keep a particular person out of their “club”. The rules that prohibited limiting a program to encourage payment were designed to keep someone out of the club. Things would probably have been better if those limits had never been imposed. No one now tells us how to market our software. We do what we feel is best for our businesses and our customers. Shareware is an idea whose time has come and gone.

Gary Elfring has been in business since 1979, he has held board positions in the ASP, SIAF and ISCF, he is founder of Elfring Fonts

I feel that my “way of life” may be changing. As one of the first shareware developers who started before we called it “shareware”, I still use the term in all of my software as well as in all of my marketing.  And since it is the well-known term for the try-before-you-buy method of marketing, I will continue to use it to let people know that we want them to try our software before they pay a penny. This is why we have 100% satisfied and happy customers, they didn’t pay until they were sure our software was what they were looking for. So I guess I will be a member of the Association of Software Developers, but will still sell my software through the shareware method of marketing.

If developers want to use the term “shareware” like I do, then they should be allowed to. And even when they grow through the years as we have in my company, if they want, they should be able to continue to use this well know term to describe the way they market their software.

Shareware definitely won. If you look on the web, most software companies including Microsoft now have trial downloads just like we do. And a lot of it is not limited at all with the exception that it stops working after a number of days exactly like we do with our software. We set the trend and now as you see, the rest of the software world is joining us, maybe not as members of the ASP, but as “shareware distributors”.

Paul Mayer wrote a number of Freeware programs in the 1970s for Heathkit computers, full time shareware author since 1991, President ZPAY Payroll Systems Inc

The role of the ASP really won’t change. What will change is the perception that people and companies might have had of the organization because of the word “shareware” in the name. The ASP will still be the organization that software developers, vendors and marketing people join to enhance their business.

The ASP’s private targeted forums are unique in many ways. Probably the best thing about them is they are where people and companies who have been in the business for many years will help out the new guy. The monthly newsletter ASPects always has articles that inspire you to do things, or make you think in new ways. The members only website too has great value. At $100 a year it is a real bargain, especially when you take advantage of offers that member companies only give to other ASP members.

Most importantly though, the ASP will remain a friendly organization dedicated to helping small commercial vendors thrive, whatever you may call them – microISVs, independent developers or shareware authors.

Mike Dulin, current ASP President, CEO  of sharewarejunkies.com and sharewareradio.com

Overall response from ASP members has been very positive. Personally, as an ASP member, I support the name change.  I avoid using the word “shareware” on my own product website. Most of my customers don’t know what it means, and those that do may view it in a negative light. I believe many of the aspects of early shareware, such as honour based payments and fully functional trials, were artefacts of the technology limitations of the time. The key concept of shareware was being able to try before you buy. It is easy to forget how radical an idea this was at the time. Before this software purchasers had to rely just on reading marketing materials from the vendor and magazine reviews of questionable independence. Try before you buy has been instrumental in improving the overall quality of software and providing a better experience for software purchasers. That was a battle that the shareware pioneers well and truly won, and they can be justly proud of this achievement. Does this mean the ASP is obselete? Not at all. The ASP still has a very important role in helping small, independent software developers to be commercially successful. Have you considered joining the ASP?

Shareware is dead – long live shareware!

Andy Brice runs a business selling seating planner software using the try before you buy model, writes a blog aimed small software businesses and provides consulting on marketing and usability to microISVs and other small software businesses. He would like to thank the many ASP members that contributed to this article with quotes or suggestions.

Shareware is dead – long live shareware! is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

1. Release a Beta

Launch a beta release, either publicly or by invitation-only, to gather feedback before a major release. This helps you discover major problems before releasing major changes.

2. Ask other developers

If you hang out somewhere online with other developers, ask them for feedback or offer a free license in exchange for testing and comments. ASP members frequently get valuable feedback from knowledgeable colleagues in the ASP newsgroups.

However, keep in mind that colleagues are often more knowledgeable than your average user and may provide a different kind of feedback than a typical computer user.

3. Ask friends or family

It may be useful to expose your software to friends or family members who have experience close to your average user. Sit them down in front of a computer and watch them go through the process of using your software. Even consider starting with having them visit your website, download, and install to provide you insight into the entire process.

Just remember that this is a major favor to ask a friend and is at least worth a beer.

4. Make it easy to find your contact information

Clearly, if you don’t have a contact form on your web site, you won’t get much feedback. The same is true for hiding your contact page. I’m always surprised when sites hide their contact info.

Link prominently to your contact page, not only from your home page, but from every page. Some sites even go so far as to add a full contact form at the bottom of every page.

5. Provide multiple contact methods

Offer different ways for users to get in touch with you. Some users prefer a contact form, especially if they use only webmail. Some prefer a direct email address that they can click on to launch their email client and keep a record of their correspondence. Some prefer to pick up the phone. The more ways you provide to contact you, the more likely you’ll hear from them.

6. Add a comments field to your order form

Most ecommerce providers do not put a comments form on your order page by default. If you have the ability to add custom fields, make sure one is for comments. I prefer a simple text box where users can dump whatever is on their mind, from testimonials to feature requests.

About one in five (20%) of my customers puts something in this field.

7. Point users to your contact page when they have questions

Make sure that users contact you when they can’t find answers to their questions on your site. At the bottom of each FAQ, write “If you have further questions, please contact us” with a link to your contact page.

Some people might point out that large companies don’t do this. Too often, that’s true. They have their FAQ’s, then make it difficult to get further information. Often these large companies also have a reputation for poor, impersonal customer service and unresponsiveness. One of your advantages as a small hands-on shop is your superior customer service. Use it.

8. Ask for feedback

If you want feedback, ask for it directly. In your registration email, write “Please let us know what you think.” At the end of every support email, write “Let me know if you have more questions.”

Reading those types of phrases gets people thinking about what comments or questions they might have. Some will send that feedback to you.

9. Provide a user community

Make an area where users can post their ideas and feature requests publicly. This might be a private forum or even a Facebook page.

A major advantage of communities is that sometimes when one person posts feedback, it encourages others to post as well, or to comment on the first poster’s comments. A dialog may develop, giving you a better notion of how popular an idea or request is.

Software for creating forums includes open source solutions like phpBB.

10. Solicit blog comments

Turning off the comments feature on your blog sends the message that you don’t want feedback. Blog comments are another way for users and potential users to tell you what’s on their minds.

Publicly posted comments can even produce reactions from others, producing advantages similar to a community.

11. Run a survey

Make a survey form on your website and send an email to your mailing list asking users to fill it out. This can get information on more specific subjects than most other feedback methods, since you control the questions asked.

A baby version of this method is to post a poll on your blog or forum. By sticking with one or two questions, you can quickly find out how the participating users feel about something specific without running a full survey.

Many survey solutions are available, including WISCO Survey Power, which you can host on your own web site.

12. Create an uninstall survey

Consider prompting users who uninstall to fill out a short survey about why they are uninstalling. This could be a simple web form or an embedded module that emails you the results. One option is to open a web page from your uninstall program, such as this sample script for Inno Setup.

While many users will decline or not enter useful information, even occasional feedback gives you an idea of why people choose not to use your software. This gives you a different perspective than comments from happy users on an order form.

How do you to encourage user feedback? Share your tips in the Comments below.

12 Tips to Increase User Feedback is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

Software labeled as “Suspicious Insight” simply has traffic among Symantec users below a threshold set by Symantec, perhaps because the version of software is new.  Many small vendors may never cross that threshold and are unfairly labeled.

See a write-up on one ISV’s experience with Suspicious Insight for more background.

Symantec Suspicious Insight is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

There are a few interesting tools around to analyze the speed of your website. Yahoo’s YSlow and Google’s Page Speed (both Firefox plugins) are a good start and offer a lot of advice and background information. In this post you’ll see graphs from Webpagetest.

This website offers the best visual analysis IMHO and shows exactly how the page is loaded, which file was received in which connection and at which time. I’ve used it to optimize my file sync webpage and will use the steps that I made as example. Here’s my starting point:

Image 1: First benchmark

Each bar represents a file. Time goes from left to right (less is better) and the different colors represent the different aspects of the file transfer.

Tip #1: File size doesn’t really matter

This may be hard to believe, especially if you used to optimize your site in pre-DSL times. But check the image again and look for blue bars. Blue means the actual data transfer times, everything else is just connection stuff. Right, there’s not much blue.

Connections count

When analyzing my site the first time I was surprised to see that things weren’t done all at once. But one after another with only a few parallels. The graph shown above assumes that your browser uses 4 parallel connections to load data. Only when one of these 4 connections has loaded a file completely the next file is also requested.

And these requests are quite slow, so keeping the number of requests  to a minimum is the important factor now. The reason is that the HTTP/1.1 standard recommends using a small number of parallel connections. The reality differs in terms of browsers:

Tip #2: Reduce number of files/images

To reduce http requests, you have to reduce the number of files/images. Stripping images that you don’t really need may be one way to do this. I had some quotation mark images that I didn’t really need. Normal characters worked here, too. If you have multiple Javascript or multiple CSS files you can combine them.

CSS sprites are another way of reducing the number of images. If you have many similar ones like menu icons or buttons with overlays you can put them into one single file and use CSS tricks to show only the part that you need. I’ve already been using them, otherwise the loading time would have been a lot worse.

Special conditions apply

The graph shows another interesting thing. After the main file is loaded, everybody waits for the next file, a javascript file, to be loaded. Only after this Javascript file is done, the images start to get loaded. This seems to be the usual behavior with browsers to allow the script to make page modifications.

Tip #3: Put javascript at the bottom

That’s why you should put javascript includes at the end of the html code. Your CSS include should be at the top however, to allow an early loading.

After making these changes, my website already loaded much faster. It started to render (vertical green line) after 1 second (before: 1.5s) and had the document completed (vertical blue line) after 2.8s (before: 3.4s). (The files coming after the blue line are the favicon and extra loads from a script.)

Image 2 – Removed 2 images, JS at the bottom

Forcing parallel downloads

The limitations for parallel requests were implemented to keep the browsers from over stressing servers. But usually the servers can handle a lot more. Since the limitations mentioned above are per domain, you can use extra domains (which may be hosted on the same server) to force the browser to open more connections.

I tried that by using the subdomains img1.easy2sync.com and img2.easy2sync.com. The downside is that the browser will need to perform extra IP lookups (even if it’s only a different subdomain). You can see this extra time as 2 new dark green boxes.

Image 3 – Using multiple domains

You can clearly see that now more downloads are done at the same time. The start-to-render time is almost the same and the document-complete time has decreased from 2.8s to 2.2s.

Tip #4: Use extra domains. Maybe.

This is a lot of work and the effect wasn’t so big for me, so it may depend on the number of files that you have. Plus, it depends on the user’s browser choice. But it can make a difference. However, you shouldn’t move javascript files to other domains, since cross-domain script access might cause problems.

Cutting connection overhead

The orange parts in the graph are interesting, too. They show the time required for the Initial Connection. You can see this orange part in every row since my server didn’t support the “Connection: Keep-Alive” feature. This feature enables the server to re-use a connection, after a file was transferred completely (instead of closing the connection and opening a new one). All current browsers support it, but maybe your server doesn’t.

Tip #5: Turn on “Connection: Keep-Alive”

My server didn’t, and it took some time until my hosting company fixed this after I inquired. You can see in the next image that most of the orange bars are gone. Since this benchmark was done much later you can’t really compare it to the previous benchmarks (some things are shown as slower now for no obvious reason), but it’s probably still safe to assume that this change improved the speed.

Image 4 – With "Connection: Keep-Alive"; taken much later than the other benchmarks

Tip #6: Use Expires or Cache-Control Headers

If you already combined or minified your CSS and Javascript resources and combined your images intro sprites, you can also apply the following tricks:

1. For static content add “Expires” header and set it far in the future.  This means that a static file like http://www.site.com/images/logo.gif, which has a low probability of changing in the future, will “never expire” so the browser will not repeatedly download that file each time it’s requested and will grab it from the cache instead.
2. For dynamic content that can change in the future, like the CSS files, you can set add “Cache-Control” with max-age=[seconds] option.  This is similar to “Expires” but this directive is relative to the time of the request, rather than absolute. [seconds] is the number of seconds from the time of the request until the browser will reconsider refreshing the file.

Summary

During this session I cut down the time till the document is complete from 3.5s to 2.2s. Making the site faster for the customers is only one aspect here. Page speed is also part of Google’s ominous “quality score”, so it might even influence your website’s position in the search results.

On the other hand, it’s never that simple. The speed differs with the location / connection of the user and the browser  they use. Image 4 also shows that benchmarks may also be different some time later for unknown reasons. But faster is still faster and spending some time to optimize your site might be worth it. To start things, simply visit Webpagetest and enter your page URL.

Thomas Holz is the owner of ITSTH and the author of outlook tools to synchronize, remove duplicates and use boilerplate texts and writes in his devblog, if he still has too much time after optimizing the website.

Advanced Website Optimization – Making your Site Faster is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

I hope this year the ASP will become even more popular (this is also the main 2010 goal of Jim Coutu, the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of the ASP) and will welcome more software authors.

A few changes have happened inside the ASP board: it has a new Chairman and 3 new members have joined the Board for a two year term. Jim Coutu from GatorData Inc is the new Chairman of the Board of Directors for this year. The three new members who have been elected for the board, that I wish to welcome wholeheartedly, are:

Don Waterfield, senior programmer/analyst at Aqumix, Inc.	Laura Look, project manager at Bitsmithsoft.	Michael C. Battilana, president of Cloanto.

A big thank you on behalf of everyone at ASP goes to the 3 members whose term ended in the Board of Directors, for all the enthusiastic work done in ASP: Henk Devos, Greg Weir and Dave Gjessing.

Get involved!

ASP depends on the commitment of professionals from the software industry. For the ASP to effectively represent you and our software industry we invite your participation. We are actively seeking passionate and capable professionals to join the ASP and serve as officers or committee chairs. Get involved at the ground level and offer your skills to help.

State of the Micro-ISV-osphere

For 2010, I think it would be a good idea to start with an assessment of your current software business situation, in comparison to the shareware industry statistics.

Our colleague Rob Ellison parsed through all the PAD files available in the ASP PAD directory (76,066 products!) and generated answers to some questions regarding the Micro-ISV-osphere state – do check it out, you might find something of interest!

So, what would you like to see ASP doing for you in 2010? Please comment below.

Happy 2010 with ASP! is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

The ASP funded the development of a software certification service called Safer Downloads (SD) through the trial stage.
It now wants to divest itself of this property and is soliciting bids to transfer ownership.

Up for sale, as a package, are the:

• saferdownloads.com (.net & .org) and safeshareware.com domain names (4 total)
• USPTO trademark registration of the seals
• ownership of the proprietary software and content used to power the site
• activity and test records, as they exist on site

All funds offered by initial prospective customers (less than 10) have been returned. Most bank balances have been recovered by the ASP. An existing CD (time deposit) will be recovered soon and so there are no financial assets transferring to buyer under this sale.

NOT for sale are the domain hosting, and DNS, Corporation shell (negotiable), records, and PayPal account. Buyer will be expected to supply own legal, financial, and internet environment. The buyer will also be expected to operate the site independently of the ASP and not imply any ongoing ASP approval, involvement, or participation.

The ASP explicitly reserves the right to not accept any bid for any reason or apply arbitrary ranking offsets. Extent of cash payments to ASP and special pricing for ASP members are two anticipated ranking factors. ASP expectation is that bidding start at $1,000.

Contact VP@asp-shareware.org with SD4SALE anywhere in each email. Such email correspondence may be quoted in whole or in part among ASP officers, directors, and volunteers having access to ASP boardroom. We ask that you register your intent prior to Midnight Dec. 13, 2009.

Safer Downloads for Sale is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

ASP Member Wins ESWC's 2009 Epsilon Award

Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware Wins ESWC’s 2009 Epsilon

ASP member Christian Mairoll of Emsi Software has won the 2009 Epsilon Award for Software Excellence at the 9th annual European Software Conference. Emsi Software’s a-squared Anti-Malware application was awarded the prize earlier this month at the conference in Berlin, Germany. The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) was a sponsor of the European Software Conference.

Every year, the Epsilon Award recognizes the best software application from the European microISV and software community. Programs are nominated by software developers, a peer-review process that ensures that only the highest quality software is considered for the award.

In addition to receiving worldwide recognition for its software, Emsi Software was also awarded an artistic creation by a European artist, special prizes from the sponsors of the event and 200 Euros in cash which Emsi Software will donate to the SOS Children’s Villages organization founded in Austria.

The a-squared Anti-Malware Security Suite

The a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 security suite for Windows features a double virus scanner plus behavioral analysis and stops viruses, spyware, Trojans, bots and rootkits from infecting PCs. In 2009, in seven independent head-to-head tests against other anti-malware software, a-squared Anti-Malware was chosen as the most effective.

In the latest test, run by the Malware Research Group, a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 recognized 99.8 percent of the 554,891 malware files used in the test, a higher score than the other 21 applications tested.

While not as well-known as some heavily-advertised security solutions, a-squared Anti-Malware has a big and growing number of victories in independent tests.

The a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5 runs under Windows, costs $40 (US) for a one-year single-user license and may be bought securely online from emsisoft.com. You can download a 30-day trial version from the same web address.

10th ESWC to be Held in 2010 in Vienna

The 10th annual European Software Conference will be held in November, 2010 in Vienna, Austria. For additional information about the Epsilon Award and about the European Software Conference, visit euroconference.org or microisv.eu.

Photo Credits: Pictured above are David Boventer (left), the European Software Conference’s Executive Director and Christian Mairoll (right) founder and head of Emsi Software. Many thanks to Dave Collins of Shareware Promotions for providing photographs from the conference. Feel free to check more of Dave’s photos from the 2009 ESWC.

ASP member Wins ESWC’s 2009 Epsilon Award is a post from: Association of Software Professionals