Launch confirmation
Launch: Monday 27th November (Today)
We’re now in mid “launch sequence”, and we will launch today (Monday 27th November). Accounts are being migrated to V3 as we speak. The image below is a taste of V3. We count 30 major new features.
See you on the other side.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Can’t…. wait… to.. see.. it!
come on time… hurry up! :P
Some beta access for old users? ;)
October 26th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
We’d do beta testing, but it would just slow us down :)
October 26th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Can you give us some teasers? Screenshots?
October 26th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Will you be enabling 3rd party modules/widgets/gadgets?
-Scott
October 26th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
It wouldn’t be much of a grand unveiling if we published screenshots…
October 26th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Yes, we’ll support widgets.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Woohoo! ten days untill my birthday and it will be launched!
btw can I use that Time teaser in my signiture in forums?
I donno how to copy it, Dynamical text or something?
Only people that can make Protopage can make such dynamic text :D
October 26th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Sure, you can view the source code for this page and borrow the code for the time ticker. We can’t offer tech support on it though - apparently we’re supposed to be working on some big project :)
October 27th, 2006 at 12:24 am
I can’t wait. Thanks for the heads-up.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:51 am
My homepage is getting updated to version 3. Can\’t wait!
October 27th, 2006 at 7:57 am
You know just what your rabid fans want - a *definite* time for v3 to be released! Protopage remains my customizable-homepage of choice, and hopefully v3 will only increase its lead on the competition. Looking forward to Nov. 13 for when the seams burst and those new features and surprises pop out!
October 27th, 2006 at 9:08 am
we love you guys
please don’t give up protopage if you can
October 27th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Thanks, Kyth - don’t worry, we don’t work 100 hour weeks for nothing! We’ve got the funds to keep Protopage going for years and years…
October 27th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
I know you guys are busy and all, but how about a countdown widget we can use right now?
October 27th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
A quick way to create a widget would be to put this page into a Web Page Widget in Protopage, and then you can see the countdown whenever you want. Use the horizontalOffset and verticalOffset features in the edit screen of the Web Page widget so that only the countdown ticker is visible (Try a verticalOffset of 200 and a horizontalOffset of 30, and tick the ‘Never display scrollbars’ box).
October 27th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I can hardly wait! I’m guessing there are going to be some sweet additions, but I’m also looking forward to one of the little things as well: support for secure feeds so I can re-subscibe to the Firefox newest extensions feed. I hope that still made the cut!
Keep up the great work guys! I recommend this to EVERYONE that asks what I use for an RSS manager, and to anyone that wants a quick launch page for some bookmarks, news, and gmail!
October 27th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Exiro, when you choose to make Protopage your desktop background by setting the ‘Active Desktop settings’ in windows, Windows makes changes to the operation of Protopage to force all links to open in new windows. This is outside of our control, unfortunately.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Keep up the good work guys, I’m sure it’s going to be really impressive. Can’t imagine what I did without Protopage now!
October 30th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
I can hardly wait either. Boy, oh, boy, gotta write the date down right away. Well, good luck with the final testing and implementation and thanks so much in advance for all Your hard work!
First Firefox 2 and now Protopage V3 - what a time to live… :-)
October 31st, 2006 at 9:03 am
Do you plan to support Safari? [fingers crossed]
October 31st, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Karthik, Safari support won’t be completed in time for V3 but we hope to support it in the future. In the mean time, many Mac users like Camino, which looks like Safari but has the Firefox engine. You can get it at http://www.caminobrowser.org/
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:45 am
Will there be an updated RSS reader facility?
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:08 am
Yes, there will be major improvements to the RSS functionality. By the way, our datacentre is performing upgrades on Monday 13th November, which is why our launch date has been pushed forward 24hrs to Tuesday 14th November.
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Very good news!
Wondering if it will be PDA compatible; WM5?
Thank you very much!
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
btw - even some hobble appearance of my page on WM5 would be usefull - a conversion to grouped text links even.
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:34 pm
We’ll look into WM5 support for a future release. Let us know your requests at our support form here, and we can tally and prioritize them according to demand.
November 4th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I hope you guys are not using the weird time format of the “Hours till launch” thingy to confuse people, by letting the count go slower sometimes. That would be naughty, naughty! ;P I put it on my protopage, I spend ages just staring at it :D
November 6th, 2006 at 4:45 am
I simply cannot wait. *Kills self*
November 7th, 2006 at 1:30 am
You guys have THE best Ajax desktop available, and you don’t even get proper credit for it. I’ve tried the others and…they’re not nearly as cool.
Keep up the great work and have fun doing it !
November 7th, 2006 at 6:52 am
I agree with Tom..
I know that you guys will release a great thing..
November 7th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Wow, just found this software. This is awesome!. I’m going to be pimping this stuff whereever I go. Very cool!
November 7th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Protopage is my favorite. I am a computer teacher and have about 12 teachers using protopage to communicate with parents and teachers. Thanks guys! Any chance having a secure page so that we can keep user names and passwords on our Protopage?
November 8th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Thanks everyone for your kind words. Danny - if your page isn’t designated as ‘public’, then all information on it will be private (pages are private by default). I think you’re talking about an extra password layer so that people can’t see the page if you leave your computer logged into Protopage. We’ve got this on our future todo list… as always, please send us your requests at our support form here, so that we can record and prioritize future features according to demand.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:02 am
Man, just make it so I can move the date thingy and you win the internets. :)
November 12th, 2006 at 3:06 am
The countdown.js that you use on this blog entry seems to be pegging my cpu. Granted I am using a creaky old 800 Mhz machine, but still.
I played around with the timeOut function a bit in scheduleUpdate - increasing the timeout interval from 360 to 3600 solves the problem.
On the other hand, Protopage works fine on my computer.
November 12th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Not long to wait now…
November 13th, 2006 at 3:19 am
What is V3? Why is everyone so excited over it? Isn’t this just a damn news blog? What’s so special about the next version of an ordinary news blog, when there are hundreds of the kind? Is it as sucky as Deviantart’s V5 was compared to V4 ?
November 13th, 2006 at 6:09 am
Aaron, V3 is the newest version of Protopage (essentially a free AJAX home page, with RSS support, widgets, weather, and so much more). This blog is unrelated to the actual V3 product except for the fact that it has tracked it’s development and given us updates.
The actual product (Protopage) can be seen here:
http://www.protopage.com/v2
November 13th, 2006 at 11:45 am
I haven’t written in for a while but - the suspense has finally gotten to me - I keep checking the date to see if it’s tomorrow yet :-)
Over the past few months I have tired various start pages but have found nothing that I like so much as protopage
thanks
November 13th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
I’m now going to hold my breath for the next 27 hours, I’m sure it’ll be well worth it.
Thanks for the hard work guys.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
lol, I’ll actually proove it later, because I live in the Netherlands. it’s 4 hours later over here so it will take longer before I come back from school.
Oh and btw, in reply to this message:
[quote]Exiro, when you choose to make Protopage your desktop background by setting the ‘Active Desktop settings’ in windows, Windows makes changes to the operation of Protopage to force all links to open in new windows. This is outside of our control, unfortunately.[/quote]
Just hope Vista will support webpage as desktop that doesn’t open a new IE window ;)
November 13th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Wow, I saw that the previous message was written at 3:38. I didn’t know it was based on English clock {GMT}.
November 13th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
less than 24hours. woooooo
November 13th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
come on come on time!!!
November 13th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I have seen it go across “24 hours to go” :-))
November 13th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Is it tomorrow, yet?
November 13th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Exiro wrote- Wow, I saw that the previous message was written at 3:38. I didn’t know it was based on English clock {GMT}.
Maybe, maybe not. As I write at 5.15pm GMT I see the previous message was posted at 6.12pm!
November 13th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
I feel like it’s Christmas Eve! Can’t wait for tomorrow.
Question. Is there a user Protopage user forum anywhere? From reading peoples comments here it seems like there are a lot of ways to use Protopage I haven’t thought of. It would be interesting to hear more and find ideas that would help my productivity.
18.5 hrs and counting!
November 14th, 2006 at 12:14 am
so as I push reload, it flashes 00.0000 for a split second. thas just harsh.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:17 am
MacsBaine Says: Is there a user Protopage user forum anywhere?
There was an unnofficial forum which seems to have disappeared , although not too many people used it, it was nice to know it was there. :-(
November 14th, 2006 at 5:19 am
Hi, it’s 5am in London, and we’re preparing for launch. The astute amongst you may have noticed a rift in the time-space continuum. In order to accomodate a longer than anticipated data migration process, we have altered the unit of time used on our countdown clock. Don’t worry though - when the countdown hits zero, we *will* launch :)
November 14th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Haha that’s impressive! I always knew Protopage developers were innovative, but they’ve figured out how to alter time itself! Can’t wait, and even if the countdown isn’t technically in hours, I much prefer seeing something count down than nothing at all, please don’t remove it!
November 14th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
8 hours!!! anxiety!!
November 14th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
looking forward to the launch in 3 hours and 33 minutes. Just can’t believe I ‘ll have to wait till I get home from work to see it!
I’m counting the seconds
November 14th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Is the clock going up ?!?!?!
November 14th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
See above about the clock going up..
Worth waiting up for tonight
Steve
November 14th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Well I’m not waiting up til 2am, I need beauty sleep, so the wife says.
Tomorrow I will rejoice……..unless the time’s reset ;-)
http://www.protopage.com/avfcfansforum
November 14th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
For all who want to estimate to their time, this is what I have.
In two hours the countdown changed from 7.0352 to 6.3653
11:53pm 7.0352
1:03pm 6.6496
1:33pm 6.4780
2:12pm 6.2639
November 14th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Why not give us exact time left … what is up with changing the “time unit”?! what unit did you change it too? will it actully be ready today, tomorrow, or the next day…lets get real peoples…
November 14th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
If one unit is equal to three hours then the launch for US central time would be 5:56am on Nov.15th
November 14th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Ok. so I’m trying to figure out this clock. Right now it’s showing 5.7300. Now it’s ticking off in seconds to if I’m reading this right there is 57,300 seconds left.
57,300 sec = 955 min
955 min = 15 hrs 55 min
So, being 3:50 Central Standart Time US (Think Chicago) that means launch should be around 7:45 AM.
Yikes!
November 14th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I agree with Paolo..
Why extend the time unit?? It’s like playing with the time.. Back to future..
November 15th, 2006 at 12:26 am
Ahk! Its all so nerve-wracking! I’m so ready for the V3…
November 15th, 2006 at 4:22 am
I think the launch date has changed 4 times… (-:
It’s all good I guess.
November 15th, 2006 at 4:22 am
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! You don’t understand!!!!!! I need my Protopage V3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 15th, 2006 at 4:48 am
DDDOOOOHHHHH!!!! Well, better to get it right later than wrong now.
November 15th, 2006 at 6:50 am
that’s alright, protopage devs
these things happen
but we know it is just as much a bummer for you as it is for us
keep up the hard work
i, for one, am eagerly anticipating the final v3 launch
November 15th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Hey, at least it’s only a few days…. it’s not like a whole year… the PS3 in Europe anyone?
November 15th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
booo..
today was waking up anxious to see v3 and… nothing.. frustrating..
but well… hope the next monday works fine.. go go go..
November 15th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I use Protopage’s unique “Desktop Widget Patterns”
Here is an explanation…. http://z0manifest.blogspot.com/2006/11/desktop-widget-patterns.html
Many congratulations on leading the way. Simply can’t wait for V3, come-on guys, first cabin all the way!
November 15th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
A long wait again… I was a bit crest fallen this morning when I saw that nothing had changed… let’s hope the wait is worth it..
November 16th, 2006 at 12:35 am
that is true..
and it feels like a hide and seek game now, who is winning?
November 16th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Does V3 support java?
November 16th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Relax guys.
Protopage works just fine right now.
Sure, we all want toys and other fun things but I’d rather have it all done slowly *once* than have the FUBAR fairy visit and dump on my carefully crafted Protopages…
As with many things in life, you can have them done quickly, cheaply and well. Trouble is, you can only choose two of them!
November 16th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Is anyone else having trouble copying and pasting html into their sticky notes? I can do it and it has worked but starting yesterday nothing shows up after saving. I guess I am wondering if this is happening as a result of the upgrade process.
November 17th, 2006 at 7:02 am
Any update team on the assureity of going live on Monday?
November 17th, 2006 at 7:09 am
take your time and make it cooooL!
November 17th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Yeah,
Any news as to how things are running over there? Its been rather quiet from the Protopage Team….I just can’t wait!!!!
November 18th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Was the downtime last night, 9ish GMT, and the present slowness of loading, due to the current upgrade work?
Or an unrelated problem?
November 19th, 2006 at 6:39 am
oh so quiet…
November 19th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Ok can’t wait till tomorrow!
Can you exactly say what time tomorrow it will be released?
Keep up the good work eh!
November 19th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
it\’s coming i am sure… i can feel it… on the new version SURELY there must be new pets to play with. or at least toys.
November 19th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
I’m beginning to miss the countdown - even if it wasn’t a true representation of time
November 20th, 2006 at 1:31 am
me too!
November 20th, 2006 at 3:35 am
I am so excited - I can’t wait!
November 20th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Ok so I am in work now in the UK and no mention of changes?!
Monday 20th November 9:18AM - What’s new?
November 20th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Come on guys. The ‘update’ was pretty ambiguous. Is there a likelyhood of launching today or can we have at least an idea
Thanks
November 20th, 2006 at 11:42 am
We’re working around the clock on this - we’ve had to rethink a few things about the way our infrastructure works. We’ll let you know. We’re learning not to try and predict the unpredictable :) Oh, and believe us, when your page suddenly switches to V3 - you *will* notice :)
November 20th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Thanks Guys!
Looking forward to it!!!!!!!!
November 20th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
So today, tomorrow?
November 20th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
I appreciate the effort going in… but can we have some clues abt the features if its going to take longer than expected… it’s a slow death I’m dying… don’t think I’ll survive much longer ;) Good luck! fingers’ crossed!
November 20th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
uff.. the neverending release.. this morning I woke up thinking in try V3 (again).. bleh..
November 20th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
New clock!!!! Woo-Hoo!!!
November 20th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
It’s not thanksgiving in the Netherlands so you can release it earlier to us X-D
I like clocks, especially when they count down!
November 20th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
TABS! Yeah tabs!!!!!
November 20th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Being ready ahead of time is an excellent strategy. Good Luck with the launch next week.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Our patience will be well rewarded from that little teaser you’ve shown us.
I for one appreciate the time and effort put into this, it’s well worth the wait to make sure you have everything 100% right.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
The sneak looks good. Lets hope for the 27th. Tabs is a great feature. Especially if I can link directly to an open tab.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Just promise us that v4 will be ready when you say its ready:-P I use protopage so often and no one else compares to what you have created. I looked forward to the new release last week, then this week, and then to get a posting saying next week…ouch. This whole past week your users where posting their eagerness and not once did the Protopage team say a word…I will always recommend Protopage, but I just can’t help myself in commenting about the poor way you have handled the new release.
November 20th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Paolo, yes you’re right. We’ve been all over the map with our release predictions. We’ll stick to incremental releases as much as possible in the future to avoid the need for large countdown events.
November 20th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Welcome back, ‘varying-speed-of-time’ countdown! :)
Top panel including the new TAB feature looks so attractive! More one week to meet the V3, okay I can wait…
November 20th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Anyone who upgrades a good, FREE, service to a great, FREE, service can launch whenever they feel like it in my book. I am still very happy with the good, FREE, service.
Thanks Protopage team!
November 20th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Thanks for the quick response Protopage team! Like I said, I will always recommend your product because is top quality! I appreciate your service to the fullest and would never deny it. It looks like this is the first huge up version you have done and now we all know its not an easy process to carry out. This will definitely be worth the wait…to all other users, I hope you understand me when I say, that it is better to try and critique honestly and directly so that things become better for all instead of constantly patting each other on the back.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
We definitely deserved the critique! When we started with V3 we realised it would take forever to put together, so we tried to downgrade the specification. But when it came down to implementation, we couldn’t bear to cut corners. We know that good or bad, that you all care enough to comment at all is fantastic. Thanks everyone for sticking with us through this.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Good work guys, thanks for sticking at it, and for keeping us informed. This last week must have seen more like a month!
Looking forward to Wednesday…
Steve
November 20th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I mean Monday!
November 20th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
i am really waiting for version 3 , i hope it will be finally launched on 27 …
November 20th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I’m not clear: does this mean either Wednesday or Monday or definitely Monday?
November 20th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
The preview looks great, tabs would have been enough for me. Looking forward to see the other goodies though.
November 20th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
Will v3 be totally compatible with Opera?
November 21st, 2006 at 12:41 am
I store a large amount of valuable information on my Protopages and I don’t want to risk having it messed up by bugs not caught and fixed before V3’s release. I hope the team ignores the pressure and does all the testing they need to do to get this right before my data sees it. This is a great product. We need to be patient. Let them release it when they know it’s ready.
(One minor complaint however – The timer really ought to be in the Days/Hours/Minutes/Seconds format. This decimal thing is just weird.)
John
November 21st, 2006 at 12:44 am
You guys rock. From what I see patience will definitely pay off.
November 21st, 2006 at 6:19 am
Tomi - David from Opera just got back to us with some workaround magic, and Protopage V3 should now be very usable with Opera version 9.
John - we’re very careful about data - we use Protopage ourselves to store a lot of important documentation. We know that extra security is important too, so we’ll be introducing ways to export data from Protopage in a future release. We use decimals because we like the way that 1/10000ths of an hour tick by three times faster than seconds :)
November 21st, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Woohoo! Protopage will be compactible with Opera! :D
This means that you can use Protopage even on your Wii! The Wii will support Opera web browser and Ajax rendering, so that’s all you need!
Wii, Opera and of cource Protopage forever!
November 21st, 2006 at 9:18 pm
This is gonna be good …
It’s worth the waiting, no doubt !
Protopage was already a ‘must’, now it’s gonna be a killer !!!
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:18 am
I love you guys :) :) I can’t wait, thank you SOOOOO much for your hard work dedication and time, this is such a great service for free, word will spread on protopage and hopefully it will get as big as myspace, in my opinion its ten times better than myspace. I’m glad I listened to that Amber Mac podcast to find out about this.
November 23rd, 2006 at 6:48 am
I am so excited by the screenshot, love Protopage and this will make it even better. Nice one
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:33 am
happy Thanksgiving. I know I’m thankful for you guys! First of all, Protopage is top notch and we can tell how much hard work you put into this. I know your dedication will reward you! Protopage is my homepage and its sooooooooo awesome. Can’t wait until Monday!
Robin
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
What I’m hoping for are widgets that are accessible by multiple users (e.g. my partner and me):
- text frames (sticky notes)
- to do lists
- calendar
- bookmarks
Happy Thanksgiving for those in the States - I hope you did finish yesterday so you can get a well deserved weekend off before the big day (I suspect however that all projects will expand to fill the time!).
November 26th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
I hope we will be able to customize our protopages extensively, because I find what’s in the screenshot kind of… well, ugly.
It’s not a fact, just my humble opinion.
But as a web designer, I must say I’d love to be able to customize my protopage’s css.
November 26th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
I feel like it’s Christmas Eve! Can’t wait to open our ProtoPage present tomorrow morning (US)! :D
November 27th, 2006 at 9:11 am
2 hours 50 minutes and counting :-)
November 27th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Less than one hour to go…..
Tension mounts…
This is getting like an Apollo launch!
November 27th, 2006 at 11:07 am
It’s a comming baby !
November 27th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Soon now…
November 27th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Must…have…update! I can’t wait for it!
Hopefully the process goes smoothly!
November 27th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
1:30pm and nothing as yet……… :-0
November 27th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Will we need to log out and then log back in for the migration to v3? If yes, will we be notified that we should do this, or should we just log out and in to check?
November 27th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Nothing happening as yet … anyone with something positive to report (ie. anyone have their page updated yet?)
November 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
F5 - FFFFFFFF5555555555555555555 !
November 27th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Migration! Yes at last - thanks - looks great! No work for rest of aft!
November 27th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
You guys are freaking awesome! My page just migrated and…. unbelievable!
Thanks so much. The wait was definitely worth it.
November 27th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
It’sssssssssssssssssssssssss OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUUCH!!!!!!
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
I just became veeeeeeerrrrrrrrry happy!
November 27th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Cool
November 27th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Very cool!
I specially like the tabs with public and restricted posibillities. But I can’t get it to work! I can’t make new tabs. It’s got so big potential, so please make it work!
November 27th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Log out and log back in again … I When I first tried to creat new tabs, it looked like nothing was happening … when I re-logged in, I was up to my chin in new tabs.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Hello! Thanks you that have found a way to unite set of people of different trades, but connected by one idea! I shall be the frequent visitor on your site. At me is many friends, adherents, I think they too will not remain indifferent …
July 17th, 2007 at 9:38 am
It’s such a great device and all for free! thank you many times. Just can’t wait to apply it to me page…
February 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I have just started using protopage and love the look! I have a hard time loading the page in a school environment with older computers. Can you tell me what the recommended computer requirements are to run protopage? Thanks :)
January 19th, 2009 at 10:31 am
comment3,