New is old?... and suggestion.
 

Minion is detecting newer version of addon. But still have a update button to installed the older version....



Suggestion:
-Minion needs a button to open the browser to the forums. I have a hard time finding this place/

-Have you guys thought about having this software scan people computer for hardware drivers update?
Example: http://www.iobit.com/driver-booster.php
But maybe the more important stuff. Like DirectX, .Net, Video drivers, Sound drivers etc., Reason being is, Not every one knows where and how to update there drivers, and software.

-There should be a button or something that tell Minion I want to installed Beta. Maybe 2 buttons. Just like the way you guys have it now. But each one on the side has a button next to the version Release, and Beta. So, user can pick which one to used. They can pick either Release version of the addons, or Beta version, etc., Example: Release version [update], Beta version[update], Current version.

-A way to make the Minion smaller. I'm using 1680x1050 monitor. Would like it I could make it smaller(left and right side.) I want it more like a square box than a rectangle.

-Needs a button for user to like the addons, and report problems that the addons has. So, the people that makes the addons can read it. This goes for both Minion, and the addons creator.

That's a known issue that's been mentioned in pretty much every Minion thread. Your options at the moment are either:
(a) don't download/update addons from anywhere other than WoWInterface,
(b) tell Minion to ignore the addons you update from Curse, or
(c) look at the version numbers and use your brain to determine whether you should actually click the "update" button next to each one.

Surely your browser has a bookmark function? Also, the Minion download page is the #3 result on Google for "wow minion" and has a link to the forums.

Ugh, no. Minion is a WoW addon updater, not a general "hand-holding for people who don't know how to operate their own computers" program.

In most cases updating your hardware drivers is totally unnecessary; the only one that really matters is your video card driver, and even that is generally not worth bothering with unless you're actually having a problem, but at least nVidia already provides you with an app you can run to check for and notify you of every available update; I'd guess AMD does this too for Radeon cards.

If you really care about getting the latest revision of your motherboard's USB drivers and can't figure out how to do that yourself, there are plenty of bloatware programs you can download for that -- including, presumably, the one you gave a link for.

Resizing is on their to-do list already.

Re: a "like" button -- what is the point? This isn't Facebook. Nobody cares how many people "like" an addon. All that matters is how many people actually download the addon.

Re: a "report problem" button -- the Curse Client has this feature, and it is absolutely hated by addon authors. The average user has absolutely no idea how to report a software bug in a remotely useful way. On my actual download page, I can write out instructions users should follow, including a list of the information they should provide in their report so I can actually figure out what they're talking about and investigate. By contrast, the Curse Client doesn't show users any of that -- it just provides a big box for them to write useless nonsense like "it dun werk lol plz halp!!1" and then auto-posts that to the download page in the background, and the user never sees any requests for further information I post in response.

It would be possible to implement an in-app bug reporting feature well, but very difficult, and (IMO) not worth the time. Users should just be redirected to the addon's download page where then can read the instructions I wrote specific to both my addon and my personal process as a developer.

This hasn't been true for at least two years, except for the people who are somehow magically not updated from v4. I absolutely detested, and usually deleted without reading, any client-generated tickets, so I sat the client developer down and explained to him how bad this feature was. It was removed when v5 was released.

Well, that explains why I get so many fewer tickets from the Curse Client now, but I definitely do still get them from time to time. Maybe from people still using the now-discontinued Mac client?

There are still the Mac users, that have been abandoned on exactly that version ;)

BTT: I do agree, Minion is an addon manager and should be just that. No ticket management, no bug reports (but maybe a link somewhere that directs the user to the addon page), no driver updates (hell, this would probably only work on Windows, anyways, and there are enough Windows-only managers), no cooking coffee nor baking cakes.

So, Minion is a useless software. I agree with what you said. Better yet. Why even download it. When I could save all the bookmarks into one folder. Then I open all of them at once, and see if there is any update. None of these problems.

I didn't say Like as in facebook way. There can be a dislike. They can even have a 5 star system.

Ok... I'm just reporting the problem to Minion. Don't kill the messenger.

"report problem" button
So, you are saying no one at all knows how to report a problem about your addon? Not even 1.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Out of the hundreds of tickets people submitted to me through the Curse Client, not a single one was a good bug report, and the vast majority were either totally incomprehensible, or were about problems with the Curse Client itself and had nothing to do with my addon.

Well...

I guess it's still quicker than going to each individual addon page, downloading, and installing them manually. So, there's that. At least I think so - that part works, right?

Right now Minion only detects if the version that is installed is different that what is located on wowinterface. We are working on making this better and detecting versions that are simple ints. You can right click the AddOn on that list and choose to ignore what it thinks is an update for now if you like. We are working to make this better by better version detection AND features to attract authors to update their AddOn here more frequently.

Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe we could add a help icon to the top right some where.

Interesting idea however right now and for the foreseeable future we want to focus on AddOns and get that working great.

Thanks, we do have a similar feature like this planned. It's going to require some updates to our website as well to make this happen and we are working on that.

I think this could be done if we found a good way to collapse the search / filters / sorting controls at the top of the installed and find more tabs.

We do want to add a "like" or "recommend" button for AddOns and its planned for a future version. Or maybe rework and integrate our favorite system into Minion.

The report problems button is not something authors really want but I appreciate the suggestion. I can understand it could easily encumber authors than help them when used en masse. If you need to report a problem with an AddOn its not too difficult right now in Minion. Click on the AddOn under the installed list and that opens the AddOn details window. Then press the "Visit Website" link and it should open your default web browser to the AddOn page on our site.

Why? How would this feature be useful for anyone, and not just a useless distraction? The Curse Client has a "like" feature and it doesn't provide any relevant information. For example, when you sort addons by "popularity" (which appears to measure downloads in the last 2 months, based on a comparison with the "monthly downloads" numbers shown on Curse.com) you get this in the top 10:

So, only 1 in every 14,700 people who downloaded AtlasLoot clicked "like", but 1 in 7,500 people who downloaded DBM clicked "like" -- that means about twice as many users per capita "like" DBM as "like" AtlasLoot, but what does that actually mean? Does that mean DBM is twice as good as AtlasLoot? If Bagnon users "like" Bagnon twice as often as AtlasLoot users "like" AtlasLoot, why does it have so many fewer users?

Now if you sort by "likes" then Altoholic is #3 with 290 "likes" even though it only has 531,294 downloads in the last 2 months -- one "like" per 1832 downloads. Does that mean Altoholic is 8 times as good as AtlasLoot? If it's so much better, why does it only have 18% as many users?

If we scroll down the list a little we see Grid with 807k bimonthly downloads but only 80 likes -- only 1 in 9,971 users "likes" Grid. Skada's popularity is very close at 783k, but it has 139 likes -- 1 in 5,705 users "likes" Skada, about twice as many per capita as Grid. Again, what does this even mean?

I agree, it's not really necessary and people generally download the addon and forget about endorsing it afterwards.

The download counter is a great indicator of an addon's popularity as it is. Some might argue that people are able to add to the downloads counter more than once in a couple month span, but I think that's actually a pro for the system.

Let's set the situation: a person has to reformat within the 2 month period of the downloads tracker and then downloads an addon for the second time. That additional download is an indicator that the user determined that the addon was so useful from the last time that he had to have it again. Why shouldn't that count towards addon popularity? The addon's so useful that it's basically a must-have for this person.

Download counters don't require any user input besides downloading the addon itself whileas the likes system would. I think download counters are far superior despite being simplistic.

I wouldn't care if the feature was added but I think it's wasted time and effort. The time creating the system would have been better spent improving the client in other ways (in my opinion).

While the download counts shown on Curse.com might include multiple downloads per user, the Curse Client only counts unique downloads per user, since you have to be logged into your Curse account to use it. This prevents people from gaming the system and padding their download count to earn more money through Curse's "author rewards" program.

I really like the op suggestions. Except for the driver thing... this just sounds like it would keep them from doing the other features better and from fixing bugs.

Even though i don't like facebook, i have to disagree with you.

The "likes" is the most meaningful information from the list provided. I have downloaded every addon you listed but would not give a like to Atlasloot, Bagnon and Recount. I'm trying Skada to replace Omen and Recount and have them installed here... if skada can provide what i need, i will uninstall Omen and Recount: 1 download for each, i like Omen and may like Skada. I wouldn't agree with Recount being more liked than Bartender but i totally agree with DBM being the first.

If any measure is valid besides the "likes" count is the "installed" count: while the "download" count would give a view of how many people has actually gone through the trouble to get and test the addon, installed count gives a notion of how many people actually keep it and the likes count would give a notion of how many people feel the addon is "good" and are willing to recommend it.

About the "report bug": it is still available on the current version of Curse client... and from a developer who cares about quality* standpoint it would be great as long as it provides a link to the bug tracker instead of the report form and it makes very clear that the bug is reported for the addon and not for the client. Sure, people can make awful reports with related or unrelated bugs but there are several techniques to force better reports.

My take on better bug reports:
1 - "Load out of date addons" is a shitty feature in WoW. Recommend users not to use it.
2 - Make it clear to users for what they are reporting a bug.
3 - Ask the users to disable/remove all other addons before posting a bug for yours.
4 - Ask the users to search previous reports before posting new ones.
5 - Provide a sample report which you find useful and optionally provide a bad report too (just be respectful about it).

* I am one of those. And something i learned from my previous experience is that no software is bug free but we can kill bugs faster if we have third parties looking for them.