After a year and a half of development, the new version of the site is finally out. This is probably the biggest technical and ergonomic change since the creation of the site in 2004, 18 years ago! The site has been completely rewritten from scratch with more modern technologies. While browsing you should also notice a net performance boost compared to the previous version.
The ergonomics have been completely revised. We have added a sidebar on the left that unfolds to access the most common actions. Overall, the site offers much more explanations, the user is better guided.
In the upper horizontal bar, by clicking on the user icon on the far right, a popup appears giving access to the connection, languages and especially themes.
We currently offer three themes, the professional dark blue theme by default, a purple theme for the more fanciful among you, and a dark theme, ideal when the ambient light is low or non-existent.
Big news the site is now fully accessible from a mobile device, smartphone and tablet are now 100% managed.
If you already have an account on our site, at the very first connection you will be asked to change your password to strengthen security. You can also decide to subscribe to our new newsletter, which we strongly recommend, no more news will escape you.
The home page becomes the central hub of the site. It gives access to the different services of the site easily.
The "Start" page disappears, it is replaced by intermediate pages to the different services. These service pages now offer a history of five configurations per machine with a total of 10 machines per user account. We would like to point out that the configuration database has been completely reset, so all your old configurations stored in your account no longer exist. This is not good, you just have to recreate new detections with our new updated engine, and moreover more complete and powerful.
The link "Start detection" allows you to open the application as before but it now takes into account the service page where you are at the end of the detection. Another important change is that by default the application now opens the drivers page and not the configuration page. An option is also present in your user profile to change this behavior.
The internal detection mechanism also changes. The application used to send a text file in XML to the server. The server would read this file to display the necessary information. We have replaced it with a binary format. The first consequence is a decrease in the bandwidth used. The second is a significant performance improvement on all config and driver pages.
The configuration pages have been completely revised. By freeing the old column on the left we have freed up space. The information displayed is less condensed and much more readable even on mobile.
For the configuration and driver pages many people did not see the old toolbar or the possibility to change the configuration. We have added an easily accessible toolbar that lists all account configurations as well as shared configurations.
The configuration sharing feature has been revised. The user is guided step by step. You can opt for the old public sharing or a private sharing by email with a member of the site.
The configuration page also offers a feature to get help on our forum directly.
The drivers page has been completely revised. We wanted to clarify the difference between the installed driver, and the driver(s) to install. You can now save or restore drivers. It is also possible to ignore some drivers.
A popup at the bottom of the screen gives you a quick access to the different drivers and allows you to launch the semi-automatic installation.
On this same page you can also report a bug and big news is that you can be notified by email when a compatible driver becomes available for your configuration.
The news pages are now much more readable than before. We have increased the text font among others. We have also integrated a commenting system that no longer depends on the forum as it did in the past.
Offline detection is now accessible directly from the homepage. Depending on your choice in the application you will be redirected to the right page.
The pages of the driver files have also been clarified. You will find the general information of the driver and the compatible hardware associated with each INF file.
Finally we will propose a series of small tools accessible from the home page. You can already display information about your IP address or generate a QR Code. Many new tools will be released in the coming weeks.
This redesign is not an end in itself but rather a new beginning. We plan to add new features regularly. We know that for existing members the change in interface may be daunting at first, but we think that over time you will appreciate the new site.
It is possible that there are still a few bugs and we will try to fix them as we go along. Don't hesitate to give us your feedback.
Here it is, it was a quick presentation of all the new features, we did not list everything, it would be too long, we leave you the pleasure to discover the rest of the features.
I will finish by thanking Raymond who helped me a lot on this site redesign. Without him I would not have succeeded. But also Bruno, Sébastien (the two people), Romain and especially robert :D
