Hello, I am Sean Moore from HomeGauge and I appreciate Don Belmont’s honest and direct criticism. I would like to get further feedback and comments on some of the items. Some of the items might be detailed and complex that most inspectors will not care about so you can feel free to respond directly back to me in email to sean@HomeGauge.com.
I am always glad to hear how users have extended HomeGauge. We do try to keep things open for the more computer knowledgeable users like Don to be able to use and extend it. The items you mentioned are:Quote:
well as someone who has hacked some of it's inner workings to get the features I needed now out of 3.3. (Like a TOC, more informative graphics , more control over the final report output and the ability to sefl publish the report in HTML to my own website) .
1) TOC – I am glad to say that this has been added in version 4.
2) More informative graphics – I am not sure how you needed to hack the inner workings of HG to accomplish this. You can include any jpg or gif. Please explain further?
3) More control over the final report output. Please explain further in detail the controls you were looking for. Again some of these might be better emailed.
4) Ability to self publish the report in HTML to my own website – This takes a person that is knowledgeable in managing a web site ( which it sounds like you are ) but did it require a “hack” of the software to do this?
Yes HomeGauge has taken the approach so far of having all of the comments for a template to be located directly in that template. This does have the disadvantage of making it a little more time consuming if you have many different templates that you would like to use those same comments in. Having all of the comments in one template/file does have some advantages.Quote:
In version 4 I'll grant that they have added an import/export utility to allow better syncing of your comments from one report template to another. But the global list of comments is really only local to the loaded template .I haven't tested the import/export as yet so can't speak to it. But even if it works there still is no convenient and centralized (read time efficient) manner for managing your comments. The new interface will still require (if I read the instructions correctly) that you take time to move your comments by hand instead of that being done (a repetitive task ideal for computer) automatically on the fly. If you have multiple templates that will be time consuming.
1) It is easy to share your one template/file with others in an email. Some HG users share their Mold or other template but don’t want to share all of their comments from all of their templates. This is very important for multi inspector shops.
2) If only the comments from a template are for that template you will not need to sort thru the comments that are not appropriate for that template. So when doing a mold inspection I will only see the comments that are for mold and not lots of other comments.
We have found that some inspectors having this issue really are creating extra work by having so many templates. Sometimes the inspector is coming from another reporting system and creates many template for 3br, 2ba and then another for 4br, 2ba. Or something like a template for home inspection and then another for home inspection with pool. In HomeGauge it is not needed to have so many templates because it is easy to add additional rooms on the fly during the inspection or to have a section that you rarely use to be excluded by default. So if your templates are really different like mold, commercial and home then it is not that big of deal for your comments to be only in that template and not shared between templates.
It is still on our list to have a global list of comments that is shared between all templates and hopefully we will get to it in version 4.1. We use feedback like Don's to help us determine the priority of the features that go into the next version.
There is a way to search the comments inside of a template. You can go to “Templates -> All Comments” and then click on the “Filter” folder on the left hand side. It will ask you to enter a word to search for and then display the comments that contain that word. This feature was in 3.3 and in 4.0. It is easy to overlook so I am glad to let you know it is available.Quote:
The interface for comments still lacks a search utility so you may know you have the perfect comment somewhere but unless you remember where (and in which template) you have to hunt for it by hand. And forget searching across all your comments in all your templates (unless you know how to roll your own search utility which I do but shouldn't have to)
Don your web hosting knowledge is beyond most inspectors that are very happy with our upload service. As you have found out the report is stored in the My Documents\HomeGauge\reports folder where a person that has the knowledge can use his or her favorite FTP client. I am glad that we have served both customers that have the knowledge and those that do not.Quote:
After experimenting with HG4 last night it still seems that there is no convenient way to publish your reports to your own website (I'll ignore their extra charge service as it is meant to build their traffic not yours). I manage my own report server and publish my reports after cleaning them up and adding some custom features and graphics that are not possible to add with HG.
Our upload service also provides much more than putting it on the web. See the link for more info -
HG Internet Tools Upload
I am not familiar with any issues of external links getting “chewed” up. Many inspectors include links in their reports to other web sites. Please explain your steps further.Quote:
Hopefully that means the internal HTML engine is a bit more versatile and will stop chewing up external links on the report but that is not tested as yet.
The itemize feature has been in version 3.3. What is new in version 4 is the ability to create the comments itemized with fewer clicks than was required in v3.Quote:
I like the new itemized comment insertion (another feature I've had for a year but had to do by hand).
The exposure controls were also in version 3.3 and did not change in 4.0. It has been the same exposure controls for over a year. I wonder if you really only had version 3.2?Quote:
The picture handler and editor seems much improved in 4 over 3.3. Considering that I found tghe ones in 3.3 to be useless it wasn't hard to improve. The exposure controls will save me a processing step if they work as smoothly as they seem to. For 3.3 the only reasonable way to get a well processed picture was to do it outside of HG.
I invite you to come over to the HomeGauge.com message board and provide your criticism and get more immediate results and feedback from other HG current users. It sounds like you were doing some unneeded extra work before with features that were overlooked that could have been avoided. I know you do not want to use the upload service but our Internet Tools does offer much more beyond just the upload including the ability to communicate with other users and discuss how to put HomeGauge to work for you.Quote:
I'm sure I'll have other comments as I use this latest version. It is a definite improvement (as it should be) over 3.3. However, it is not perfect and will benefit best by honest and direct criticism.