Panorama X, apparently still not ready for prime time

ErikMH · July 24, 2023, 8:35pm

Sigh. It had been a good three years since the last time I’d downloaded Panorama X. I’ve been coding since 1978, and have used dozens of IDEs and many languages and platforms. I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Panorama since I used it for a work project back in the mid ’90s.

After I downloaded the current version (apparently you want everyone to use the beta, released three months ago, since I was given no choice) and moved it to my Applications folder, I launched it.

And was presented with a modal dialog box asking me to take a survey. I spent a few minutes filling it out, going so far as to add a bunch of databases and programming languages in the free-form comments that hadn’t been offered as choices on the relevant panel.

And then I attempted to submit the survey. I was told that my email address was “invalid.” ”Interesting,” I thought. “I must have made a typo.” Double-checked it. It was fine. Changed it to a different one. Still registered as “invalid.”

[Normally at this point in writing up a bug report, I would go back and attempt to do everything a second time, so that I could get the exact wording of error messages and report accurately on exactly what happened when. When I re-launch Panorama, I am not now invited to submit a survey, so I cannot do these basic steps, for which I apologize.]

I could not cancel the survey, and I could not submit it because Panorama insisted my perfectly normal email address was “invalid.” At some point, a modal dialog box popped up over the modal survey dialog, reporting an error that I cannot at this point remember (and, as I wrote above, I cannot get it to show up again because I cannot re-enter the survey). Pressing the sole button on the modal error dialog box accomplished nothing. The modal error dialog wouldn’t go away, and the modal survey box behind it wouldn’t go away either.

I finally force-quit Panorama X 10.2.0 b33.

I’ll probably try again in 2025 or ’26.

admin · July 24, 2023, 10:28pm

I’m sorry you had such a disappointing experience with Panorama X.

Please note that this was a “request”. You can decline to take the survey - it’s not necessary to enter any information at all. Even the email address is optional. We do appreciate it when people do fill it out, and read every single submission. But you can still use the trial even if you don’t fill out any of the information.

We use an API provided by mailgun.net to validate emails. If we don’t, we get all sorts of garbage, some intentional, some accidental. This service seems to usually work well and we’ve run thousands of emails thru this API. There are a nmber of new trial users that successfully submitted their emails today.

I did take the email address you used to sign up for this forum and ran it through the validator, and it accepted it as valid. So I have no idea why it would have failed. Perhaps the error message that popped up next is related.

When I re-launch Panorama, I am not now invited to submit a survey

Our server does show that you started a trial today, so that is why it is not inviting you to start the trial again. As I mentioned, it’s not necessary to fill out the survey to start the trial. Once the trial is started, Panorama doesn’t pester you to fill out the survey again.

At this point there is probably a good chance that you have already deleted Panorama X.app from your computer. But if you haven’t, you should be able to launch it and use it, and even re-enter the survey if you wish. To do that, you would choose Site License from the Panorama menu. You should see something like this:

If you click on the cake icon or the 90 second survey link you should be given another opportunity to fill out the survey. If you do that and it still rejects your email address, I would be very interested in knowing what that email address was.

Thank you for being open to that possibility.