SupportS3 Backup RC3
S3 Backup 1.0 Release Candidate 3 is now out! This is the last release before we go gold and release 1.0 final. What remains to be done is to put some finishing touches to our payment processor integration and we’re all set. This shouldn’t take longer than a couple of days and as the name suggests the 1.0 final will be identical to the current release unless we discover some problem.
Licensing system overview
The RC series was a great success with practically no bugs discovered during this period, confirming that the app is fully deserving of 1.0 moniker even for such a critical task as data backup. It did take quite a bit more time than anticipated to get here, though. This was caused by making sure that all the details of our licensing system are fully ironed out. And it’s a beatiful piece of software which we have full confidence will serve us and our customers well. I’ll be writing more on it in a couple days.
Essentially it’s a system that lets one try, buy and further manage software without bothering with keycodes, saving order receipts etc. Having this central location where the customer’s software is listed opens up the possibility to further improve it with backup status overview for all your computers and other time-saving features.
This system is being rolled out gradually. At this moment it is limited to binding your S3 Backup installations to your account (we use Google Accounts for login, so most of you will not even need to register). In a couple days we’ll roll out the next stage, at which point for all of you who have preordered S3 Backup your orders will be automatically imported and appear in your account. We determine the account to bind the orders to based on the emails used in the order. We allow you to add as many email addresses per account as you need, so if you’ve made an order using an email different to the one you use for login, it still can be automatically imported.
This system allows us to finally get rid of timed expiry. The trial licenses still have a time limit, but if you have preordered or will decide to buy a license later, you will not be required to reinstall the app.
Licensing system UI
The licensing system was the primary focus of development for the last couple months, but instead of explaining all about it right now, we’ll do that in a separate blog post. Here I’ll just list the licensing-related things that were added to the UI.
- The status bar now shows your license status. You can click it to bring up a window that lists more details about your license and allows you to refresh it or manage it online.
- If your current license requires your attention (such as your trial has expired), this window will be shown automatically on startup.
- Overall license subsystem is very smart and should not be intrusive at all. Please let us know if you have any concerns.
- We’ll publish an extensive FAQ on our licensing system properties from users’ and from technical perspectives, but for now we’ll be happy to answer your questions in the comments section.
New features
This is a release in RC series, so we intended to hold all the new features back for a post-1.0 release, however, as it took so long, we decided to include some of them now.
- New Singapore region is now supported.
- We’ve added support for Reduced Redundancy Storage. RSS is not really suitable for backups, as there’s a chance of data loss, but it’s up to you to use it if you want the discount (it’s 33% cheaper).
- When cancelling the backup job, uploading will be interrupted immediately (in earlier versions current file was allowed to finish uploading).
- App startup is much snappier, you can start changing settings and backup jobs while the app is still getting the initial file listing.
- Deleting buckets is now faster, especially the bigger ones. We now list and delete bucket items concurrently saving memory and time.
- When planning a backup, debug log now contains a bit more specific reason a certain file is to be uploaded.
- We’ve updated backup progress window:
- It now has an icon.
- It can be resized, so there’s enough space to show even the longest filenames.
- This window was sometimes opening behind the main window, but not anymore.
Backend changes
- We’ve updated filesystem code to benefit from fewer, more efficient WinAPI calls.
- Reaction was sped up quite a bit as well.
- There’s an all-new thread management and synchronization code.
- We took the time to add tons and tons of automated testing for our code. This means adding new features and rewrites has a lower chance of breaking anything and will take less time from now on.
- Some third-party libraries were dropped in favour our own shiny new ones.
Some of the minor tweaks and bugfixes
- When setting up the backup job, we don’t complain about missing drives anymore (still logged though)
- Migration from the old filedb was failing in one very rare corner case (possibly encountered by just one customer)