Monday, August 21, 2006

Comicbase 11

I recently purchased Comicbase 11 Professional. I'd always heard it was the ultimate comic book collection software. All I have to say is if that is truly the case then comic book collection software is in a sad state. Over the past week I've found several bugs in the software that are written off by the author as 'by design.'

Here is a perfect example that left me speechless. There are browsing arrows at the top of the screen which bring you from one title in your collection to the next. When you reach the beginning or end of your collection you would think that it would stop on the first or last title of you collection or loop around to the beginning or end. That isn't the case at all. The first/last titles in the database ("0/6, o6Po (Netcomics, 2005)" and "ZZZ, ZZM (Alan Bunce, 2000)") are displayed as a place holder so the software knows when to stop. So in summary you get to browse through your collection plus one title at the beginning/end that have nothing to do with your collection. I'm not joking and I was told by the author that this is "by design." I couldn't respond to him, I was left speechless. You would think that at version 11 a piece of software would be a relatively refined piece of work.

Perhaps I'm being a bit critical as I have been writing database driven applications for over a decade myself. I'm putting this in my blog for the search engines. Hopefully the next technically savvy person researching CB11 will google this post and think twice before spending way more than this software is worth. Before closing I'd like to offer some positive remarks on the software. The data itself (not the application which presents it) is very useful and detailed. It is so good that it almost (that's a big almost folks) makes the software worth the price tag.