UltraEdit 2022 is one of the most monumental versions in the editor’s 29 years of existence. A team structure shuffle, a shift in product design philosophy, and most importantly more involvement from the community has brought unprecedented change in the way we do things.
Working with a new team and structure
As some of you may know, UltraEdit was acquired by Idera in August of last year, which means that UltraEdit 2022 is the first version of the editor that was initiated under new systems and brand new team members.
This year has been all about discovery, Finding what we do well and what we don’t. We have identified, focused and built on our team strengths, while using our new Idera resources to improve or eliminate our weak spots.
The new year will see the UltraEdit team take everything we have discovered over the past year, and pour that into new releases centered on meeting and exceeding our users’ needs.
– B. Hawkins, UltraEdit Product Manager
Because of this, the UE team quickly grew from a handful of people wearing different hats to a more organized team. The study of Economics would suggest that specialization and division of labor is a prerequisite to business growth; and that’s exactly the name of the game for UltraEdit for 2022.
This year was all about allocating these newfound resources into previously unfeasible initiatives for UltraEdit. Tapping into the experience and expertise of our new team members and sister brands, UE was able to launch customer surveys, host community webinars, and reinvigorate its blog.
Most importantly, this new structure paved the way for more focused roadmapping and planned product releases. More on this in the next section.
Reimagining our product development philosophy
UE 2022 is predominantly focused on a series of “under the hood” improvements.
One of the benefits of the new system this year was that our product manager and engineers were able to step back and focus on improving existing functionality, instead of trying to add new things to an already expansive feature set. (This was fairly common feedback from our users.)
Here are some of the other advantages:
- Access to more user feedback and suggestions
- More time to interact with the community
- Liberty to plan for the long-term
- Improved structure and accountability for releases and roadmaps
- Expanded user interaction through various channels
Here is a quick rundown of the most notable improvements in UltraEdit in 2022:
- Faster overall performance
As mentioned, optimizing and updating current features for better and faster performance was a primary focus in 2022. For instance, startup speed and macro playback speed is now significantly faster (up to 50% faster).
UE 2022 brought improved performance to the basics.
- Establishing the technological foundation for future releases
The syntax parser overhaul, the HTML Tidy updates, and the new browser rendering engines are investments into the future of UE. These changes, while useful immediately, pave the way for upcoming improvements such as a third-party plugin architecture.
HTML Tidy UI and commands list overhaul in UE 2022.1.
- Better, not bigger
UltraEdit offers a wide breadth of functionality. Instead of brainstorming on what we could add next, with the 2022 series we shifted our mindset to “What can we improve?” with a focus on the feedback we receive from you, our users. An offshoot from this is our upcoming plugins initiative, where we can focus on core editor performance and quality, while empowering our user base to add complementary functionality to the editor to suit various use cases.
If you want to read more about UE 2022.0 and 2022.1, head on to the features tour page.
Community Involvement
Another key focus area for UltraEdit in 2022 was engaging our community. UltraEdit has accumulated user reviews on G2 for the longest time which is beneficial from a product development standpoint, but this is mostly one-sided communication—not the best if you want to actively engage your audience.
To fill this gap, we had to try new things. For instance, the webinars hosted this year were unprecedented. It opened an avenue for our dev team to speak with the users. Carefully designed surveys were also conducted in order to paint a clearer picture of the editor’s usage patterns and demographics.
Ben Schwenk talks to the audience at the UltraEdit Masterclass webinar.
Here are a few interesting tidbits about the UE community:
- The most popular programming/markup languages (from most popular to least are:
SQL, HTML/CSS, Python, Javascript, and C/C++
- The most important purchasing decision factors were: value for the price and quality of customer support.
- Almost half of the survey respondents are either in IT or in the education sector.
Lastly, our team was able to collaborate with one of our largest and long-term customers, culminating in valuable improvements to the product itself. Collaborating with our customers to provide a customized solution was a very memorable experience. Learn more about it in our case study.
What’s Next
It’s all hands on deck once again for 2023. We hope to pile on the foundation we’ve built in 2022 and carry the momentum over to the next year.
How did we do this year? What else should we focus on next year? Send us your expectations and feedback here.
Happy new year and happy editing!
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