New release system - beta testing?

[Nick]

Usually if a new version has a lot of changes and I'm not entirely confident about them not breaking anything, I'll release it as a beta. If there are problems, lots of people download a buggy script not taking into account it's a beta, and that's not great for obvious reasons.

Now that this forum has a decent amount of visitors, I'm considering releasing the betas here first for testing before the "main" release.

The purpose of this topic is really to see if anyone would be interested since there's not much to be gained, except an early copy of the script that may or may not work better.

For instance, in the next version I've made lots of changes to the javascript parsing that means MySpace (and hopefully a lot of other sites) load without the 10-15 javascript errors as in earlier versions. Without testing every site for every release, I just can't be sure that these changes are an improvement so that's why I'm looking towards semi-public beta testing. Would anyone be interested or should I continue releasing betas on the main site as a full version?

[SuperBad]

Me - Very Interested!

[EdwardTobia]

I would definately be interested!

[Amathar]

We are interested in testing, because the are some websites we want to use which do not work with glype till now.
cgi-proxy does not have this problem.

[Evolv5]

I think it's a great idea.
As you said, it makes sense, as, otherwise there's a risk of having a bunch of pissed off webmasters who didn't dubble-check the release and read that it was a beta.

[SuperBad]

well, how about a beta list? I recommend creating a google group to share the files, and closing the group, and inviting in beta testers only.

That way you could have a smaller group of people who understand beta and can drive problem points home faster than in a forum. thats what I use, you get 100 MB and unlimited bandwidth.

I also use Yahoo groups, which I used for two years before google groups, and I hate yahoo groups, they are a terrible mess.

It's very similar to gmail.

[almecho]

Count me in. I agree with the semi-closed idea as the average webmaster really shouldn't be using beta software in a production environment untested, but there are definatley webmasters around that like to test things thoroughly before deploying an update, and that's exactly what your looking for. win/win situation...