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TTG #0016

Developers Down Under

G’day folks,

I write to you from Melbourne, Australia, where I’m approaching the end of a working holiday catching up with The Turning Gate’s other half, Ben Williams. It’s my first time here, so I’ve been doing some exploring and sightseeing, as well as working with Ben to get things in order for our next round of releases.

The Turning Gate has been relatively quiet these last few months, with infrequent newsletters and little chatter on the blog, but with good cause. We've been knuckles down, hard at work on CE4.

The first seeds of CE4 were planted nearly a year ago with a series of disparate prototypes for site navigation, page layout, social networking, etc. I began to pull the pieces together, implementing feedback and feature requests from the CE3 cycle, and gradually shifted the balance of my work from CE3 upkeep to CE4 development. For most of 2014, I've been nearly full-time on CE4. Now I'm in Melbourne, and for the very first time Ben and I are sharing an office space; we can finally whiteboard ideas rather than email them, have debates over coffee rather than over GTalk, test and troubleshoot plugin builds side-by-side, and high-five when we get things right. We’re softly targeting July for release.

From a high-altitude view, CE4 will be bringing to the table:

As we approach release, I'll provide greater detail and opportunities to go hands-on with output demostrations.

For those of you having only recently bought into CE3, no worries. We’ve been pre-selling CE4 SKUs for some time now, so recent purchases will be upgraded automatically, for free. For older orders, we’ll be doing the usual thing, providing you all with discounted upgrade opportunities. If you were with us during the transition from CE2-to-CE3, then you will know what to expect.

We are planning to launch with:

You may have noticed that the Client Response Gallery is not in that list. For now, it’s on the backburner, and CE3 remains the current SKU. We want to reconceptualize it, and will hopefully have a new, fundamentally different and much improved version together later in the year.

In other news, our resident community superstar Rod Barbee has launched TTG-Tips.com, where he's been compiling his vast expertise into articles about great ideas and best-practices for TTG users.

Rod has been a valuable participant in our community forums, so many of you already know him. The site is definitely worthy of inclusion in your bookmarks or feeds, and don't be shy about using the donate button to buy the man a beer.

Also, if you're interested in photographing some natural beauty in America's Pacific Northwest, Rod is an excellent teacher and still has a few open slots for this year's photo workshops.

... keep an eye on our blog. As we get closer to July, I will hopefully have things nailed down well enough, and will have some time to start shining a spotlight on some of what's new and cool in the upcoming CE4 releases, and I'm planning a CE4 redesign of my personal site so that you can go hands-on with things ahead of release. In the meantime, we're going to be getting deep into a final round of testing.

In parting, I leave you with some snapshots from my trip, a music video and a bit of history.

Back in the 90s, a little Australian band called Frente! stole my heart. I joined an email-based discussion group devoted to the band and eventually setup a Frente fan site, my first web-design project of any significance at all. Ben also had a Frente fan site at that time, and so we became friends. Later, I was recruited by Frente's singer, Angie Hart, to work on her official websites, which I've now been doing since the late 90s. This fueled me to delve deeper into web-design, and here we all are today ...

Frente! is currently touring in support of a new 21st anniversary edition of their seminal debut LP, Marvin the Album. While I've been here in Melbourne, I've gotten to attend three of their concerts, and have had the pleasure of catching up with the band and other friends I've known for a lot of years.

There's good argument to be made that without Frente, The Turning Gate might not exist. Through Frente, I was motivated to pursue web-design in seriousness, and also met Ben, one of my best friends and the best business partner I could possibly hope to have.

And because The Turning Gate began as my labour of love, here's Frente's Labour of Love on YouTube. I hope you will take a few minutes to give it a listen.

I've also been loving Australia's wildlife. On a short hike last week, Ben and I encountered a lyrebird practicing its mating dance. I've seen a lot of other incredible birds, some kangaroos bounding through fields, koalas in the trees, wallabies, and penguins at Phillip Island. Sadly, I was not camera ready for the lyrebird, and photography is forbidden of the penguins. But these were awesome:

So that's the happening. Stay tuned, and we'll have lots more to say about CE4 in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Matt