HS 2.0 Rick makes a statement!!

[jlehnert]

Krumpy had a suggestion to have all the beta testers and owners of the plugin to post their testing results on the HS beta tester forum

An excellent idea, but that doesn't help the people who are not beta testers. Once HS 2.0 goes to production, there has to be some type of mechanism for people to verify which plugins work, BEFORE taking the 2.0 plunge.

First of all the speed at which HS2.0 executes is amazing

Good to hear that. When Tink did his demo in MD back in January, between the way the demo was setup, and the current state of the code, any speed difference was not noticable. The only place at that time that I saw a difference was on the web screen refresh. Since 2.0 does not redraw the entire screen like 1.7, there was a noticable improvement there.

 

[JohnWPB]

Just another small feature that I do really like in HS2.0. The ability to have speech come out any computer on the network. This reqires a small client side tray program. When any speech is spoken by HS you can dirrected to any or all PC's on the network.

The other advantage of the client side app is Voice Recognition. Say Sally has a computer in her room, she can train a voice profile, and then issue commands to Home Seer. HS can also tell where the request came from and pipe the speech back to that system. So if Sally asks what the current temperature is, from her computer, HS will reply with the temperature to her PC from which the request came from.

I changed a few lines in my caller ID announcement, and it is pretty kewl :blink: When say my roomates mother calls, it now announces in My Room "Danny's Mother is calling". However in Danny's room it annouces "Your mother is calling".

I agree with what others have said here for sure! Let me put it bluntly.....I HATE the fact that HS2 is all web based. I like the look, speed and feel of a GUI, and not a webbrowser. Setting up events and conditions is a royal pain in the u-know-what. To further complicate matters, HS2 will NOT work with Firefox, opera and a few other browsers.

Rick from HST: "So after avoiding anything that ties us to a specific browser for 6 years, we have finally gone with DHTML which will not render properly with all browsers".

As the interface is web based, it should not be too hard to create a GUI to work as a frontend for HomeSeer. I do not have the programming skills for such a task, but I sure hope someone else does, and takes on the task :blink:

 

[Rupp]

John,
I too was very, very disappointed by the fact that there wasn't going to be a so called GUI app any more but the more I play with it the more I like it. Couple that with the fact that the delivered version will run as a service and (light bulb on) it ingenious. HS running on a server somewhere in the closet and you can get to the Web based GUI from anywhere in the world. It's the same interface no matter what machine your on or where you are. Granted it took me a few days to get used to the "style" of event and device creation screens but no more RPD into the HS server to do what I can now do from anywhere. This is really powerful.

 

[smee]

I haven't seen 2.0, so I really can't comment on the browser vs. GUI situation. I don't think I like the sound of browser-only, but I'll have to see it.

What I really don't like is that it won't run on Firefox. I really do not want to have to run IE for this.

 

[buck1s]

I don't want to run IE either. It will take a substantial addition of features for me to jump to HS 2.0 and IE.

Chris

 

[Squintz]

Did not know IE was needed. I can't run IE because i have some popup thing attached to it that i cant get rid of. Tried S&D and AdAware and neither seem to fix my problem. I would try the other one that people are raving about but it seems to break HS.

I will atleast try the Trial Version of 2.0 but being forced to use IE is not a good thing.

What is it about 2.0 that makes you need IE? Is it something that one of our expert programmers could overcome by writing a plugin for mozilla?

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

Rupp,

Thank you so much for the very useful updates!!!!

Martin

 

[JohnWPB]

Squintz, I dont think a plugin is gonna help here unfortunately The HS web interface was programmed using DHTML tags/code. These are not supported by Firefox, Opera ect.

They will suposedly work with Netscape, from what I hear, but I do not know the details. I don't realy understand why DHTML will work with NS and not FireFox, as they are very close to the same engine. I probably should not say that, because honestly I do not know all the internals of the browsers and how they work.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I can't run IE because i have some popup thing attached to it that i cant get rid of. Tried S&D and AdAware and neither seem to fix my problem. I would try the other one that people are raving about but it seems to break HS.

Squintz: I wouldn't just let this spyware/virus remain on your computer and just avoid it by not running IE. CounterSpy did break Homeseer, but latest reports is they fixed that problem (after they were made aware of this issue). You could always back up your registry/system and try it to see if it fixes your problem. I also assumed you scanned your system with an antivirus program with its latest virus definition files. Maybe someone else can chime in with some alternate tests.

As far as running IE with HS2.0, I really don't see what the big deal is if it means having a web interface vs not having one.

 

[Bruce L]

As far as running IE with HS2.0, I really don't see what the big deal is if it means having a web interface vs not having one.

vs not having any interface & not using HS 2.0

 

[rocco]

vs not having any interface & not using HS 2.0

Amen. After running Firefox for a few months, I will never ever go back to IE. I will change home automation software first.

 

[Rupp]

WOW Rocco. What is it that is that bad in IE?

 

[rocco]

WOW Rocco. What is it that is that bad in IE?

It's not just how bad IE is, it is also how good Firefox is.

What's so bad about IE? Adware. I use to spend about a day a week cleaning it off of my workstations. Since switching to Firefox, I can use that day for paying work.

What's so good about Firefox? It is secure, it is faster, its interface is nicer, it downloads better, its plugins seem better (has a great spelling checker), and every day I find something else I like about it . . .

 

[huggy59]

You know, you guys should check out the Avant browser. It's IE's back end with a tabbing front end, and additional capabilities such as blocking for pop-ups, ads, URLs, activeX, scripts, flash and others, specialized plugins, mutli-URL groups, RSS, etc. It's not exactly Firefox, but it does have MS DHTML built in because it is the IE engine.

One feature I like is the ability to scale the whole web page (not just fonts) from 25% to 500%.

http://www.avantbrowser.com

 

[Rupp]

Rocco,
Since installing XP SP2 I haven't had a single incident of adware. They put a popup blocker in IE with SP2 and it works really well.

It's a shame FF didn't adopt the standard DOM or it would probably take over IE. It's popularity is growing by the month. NN is all but gone so the two biggies are IE and FF.