When?

Back on June 12th I posted about my philosophy around discussing dates. I said in that post that I won't discuss dates:

The problem with software schedules is that they are hard to predict. It is an inherent part of the nature of the craft. So we generally don't offer predictions for dates beyond the specific current set of changes we are working on. It just causes lots of problems.

Well, now six months later, it is time to lift that embargo. The technology team is now more than 90% confident that we will be going live with the new site on November 18th (the week after next).

What have we done today, and what do we have left to do?

Today's Release
We released some code today that primarily pushed files to tell end users and Windermere agents about the plans to update the site on the 18th. It also includes a bug fix, and more importantly, now sets the latest map search as the default search.

This means that starting today users who visit the site will have "PropertyPoint3 BETA" selected, so if they click on a state, they will go to that state in the new map search. Our primary purpose for doing this is to be able to monitor the performance of the new map search under real load, so that we can take care of any performance issues before this becomes the only search option on the eighteenth. We are confident that the new search will handle it based on all of our performance enhancements over the last few weeks. This is a major milestone for us, to move users to our latest search.

Wendy Features Development
"Wendy Features" is our code name for the release that includes:

• Updating the Home Page to the simple search experience
• Adding the new header and footers for the site wide navigation
• Modifying our map search to fit into the new site navigation

We expect the development team to be completed coding these changes tonight or tomorrow morning. We will then place the release onto our QA servers so that we can test test test and test all next week, fixing any issues that we find along the way. This will put us in position to throw the switch on the eighteenth.

So, here we are in the end game. A little more code to write, and a lot of testing and stabilization. Expect next week to be busy and exciting

Way Back Machine, Windermere.com Through the Ages

Yesterday Robert (our illustrious architect) put the finishing touches on some code changes related to speeding up our Map Search. This is part of our second wave of work related to making the Map Search work faster. The changes are in our QA environment, and hopefully we'll be putting the newly enhanced code onto the live site some time next week.

On a parallel track, JP and Anu have been coding away at the home page update. Lots of progress, but not much of it is visual. For example, JP is days away from completing parsing of user input from the home page.

The excitement level is building on the tech team as we are getting closer to releasing this update. Yesterday, a few of us spent some time on archive.org looking over some of the previous incarnations of Windermere.com. I thought it might be interesting to provide some sense of the progression of Windermere's web presence over the years.

Here's the very first web presence for Windermere, dated June, 1997:

It's hard to say what it really looked like, as it appears some images and styles weren't archived. I presume that there wA simple design, that would probably load pretty fast over those new 28.8K modems that everyone was using at the time.

The next update came about a year after that, from December, 1998:
It probably never really looked quite like this to users, as monitors at the time were typically only 640 pixels wide, which that image map would fit right into. I'm actually quite fond of this version of the site.

The site was updated five years later, in 2003:
Pretty pastel. I wonder if these colors were in vogue then? Also a lot of ways to search, but the primary screen real estate was given over to messaging.

Windermere.com still has essentially the same look today:
Some of the colors are stronger, and there is an extra way of searching crammed onto the home page, but all in all, the same design, and the same code.

Finally, here's the current design for our next version that we are currently hard at work on:
This is fresh off of JP's development machine, so real code. What you can't see is how many searches work well from this page right now.

Progress Update on Home Page Update

We've all been heads down writing code and preparing our servers for the update. I covered our success getting the mass file update here. Since we've deployed those changes, they've been very solid.

In the meantime, yesterday was a big day for us, as we released some code changes and server configuration changes designed to enhance the performance of our new map search. It's still in beta, but you can check out of 100,000 listings in the state of Washington here. That's a lot of listings, so you may need to zoom the map in pretty close before the listings start appearing.

Since we released that update, the site has been stable, and definitely feels faster. It's important to us that we tune the performance of the new map search, as it will be the only search available after the home page update, and we want it to be a good experience, and we don't want our servers to get overwhelmed during times of high usage.

In the meantime, JP and Anu have been coding away like crazy. Despite a series of unfortunate events yesterday, involving spilled coffee, broken sofas, and smashed power supplies, JP has made a lot of progress on the site code itself. Here's a bona fide screen shot from his development computer showing the work that he's accomplished getting the new map search into the new header/footer, as well as integrating Anu's work to get the clippings integrated:
Also note that the login functionality now works. I think our search page is looking great. I am getting very excited about this update.

More Developer Screen Shots

JP sequestered himself for the last two days, and came back with the HTML all wired together on his development computer for the new home page. The search isn't hooked up yet, the login doesn't work yet, and there is a host of other work left to do on the home page.

That said, I couldn't be happier to see so much progress being made on the front end of the new home page.

Note the sweet background image. That's a picture of JP. Maybe we'll just leave that in place for the roll out!

Preivew the Web Site Changes!

Damon and the marketing team put together a very snappy and slick preview site to promote the upcoming web site changes. It's a a flash experience at:
http://www.preview.windermere.com

Another Bona Fide Screen Shot

While JP has been working on the header/footer, Anu has been getting the map search ready. Notice that the clippings feature has moved from the header down to a tab on the search pane. Notice the new pushpins too.


Here's a shot that shows the clippings pane in action, just like in Damon's spec ...


Next step is to restyle the tabs on the search pane, and then to apply JPs new header.

These are screen shots taken from the developers' computers. As they are writing and changing the code, the do so locally on their own computers. When they feel the changes are ready for testing, they then check in the code so it can be moved to qa.

Bona Fide Implentation Screen Shot

Here's a screen shot from JP's development computer showing the new header and footer actually implemented. Sweet!

Next Steps:

1. Get the log in functionality working properly
2. Start working on the new search experience (which will replace the stuff currently in the center of the page
   

Stay tuned.