Beta testing

I spent the whole morning beta testing. Beta testing for what you might ask? It was for the new iteration of my website engine, SquareSpace version 6. The version 5 has been up and running for a good 4 years, well before I started using the platform in March 2009. So far, small improvements were added into the system, but nothing major like the upcoming version.

Fired up, I singed in and did the needful. The template looked amazing, but since it was still in beta, it lacked flexibility. I think much work were put in for stability hence not much tweaking were able to be done. I ended up using an animation-rich setup, although the colour scheme needed looking into.

The gallery page took ages to load, mainly due to local flash-like execution. My SmugMug gallery tended to load up much faster, so I might be sticking to that.

Another issue was the width of the site. It was pretty limited, and the site ended up feeling like a tumblr project. Nice, but not really for serious blogging ….

I am sure many more improvement would be made, and I will be writing my feedback to SquareSpace from time to time. But now, it is time for exploration ……

Give the site a twirl here.

Beta testing

I was invited to beta test the new Android app for my blog platform SquareSpace. After using the service for the last two and a half years, I'm certainly very familiar with the system, and for the last year or so, I have more or less exclusively been using the mobile app for blog entries - explaining the typos.

I usually used either my iPod or iPad. The app made entry in the fly very easy. The main issues I have with it was the photo upload. My blog width on the website was 750 pixels and the maximum width on mobile photo uploads were only 600. The other issue was integration with html scripts for my adverts and other blog elements. I would still need a PC to do adjustments afterwards.

The Android app appeared robust. It has yet to crash so far. The stats panel looked more extensive compared to the iOS app. Photo upload also appeared quite fast. I plan to blog on the fly using this app regularly for the next couple of weeks.

Blogged using my SquareSpace Android App.