Release Candidate 3 Beta and a New Web Site...

Hello everyone, Bryan Klein here...

I am filling in for Kevin today as he is off having fun giving a talk today to IAAI in Canada... Lucky.

We have been receiving some great feedback from those of you who have been testing the new releases.
I hope that you all keep it up on this new release RC3, and those of you who are not testing yet, please take this opportunity to give it a try.

We have been listening to your feedback about the Sourceforge websites and have decided to make a major shift from SourceForge to Google Services.
This move was to address many of the comments stating that although many of the features of the SourceForge site were great, the actual navigation and usability was lacking. The demand was for more simple and easy to use site, without loosing any of the nice features that SourceForge offered the community.
I think we were able to accommodate these requests.

Introducing the new FDS and Smokeview Website...

http://www.fds-smv.net

This URL is all I will give you, as I hope that you will go to the site and see for yourself how easy it is to navigate and find what you are looking for.

This new site now integrates the following features:
Direct Download links,
Discussion Group,
Support Issue tracker (easier to use and more flexible),
Community Event Calendar,
Weblog / Journal,
Subversion (SVN) repository,
and more...

The site is new and still under construction, but most of the most important stuff should be there.
Remember, this testing phase is more than just testing FDS and Smokeview...
Feel free to comment on the site, what you would like to see there, what is unnecessary, etc.

Ok, one more link...
To those of you who want to build from source nightly or whenever you feel like it, Jason Floyd made a short How-To page for accessing the SVN repository and synchronizing it with a local folder on your machine. Take a look and tell us what you think in the discussion group.
http://code.google.com/p/fds-smv/wiki/AccessingSubversionRepository

I will leave you with that, and again, get a free copy of FDS and Smokeview while they last...

Best Regards,
Bryan Klein
bryan.klein@nist.gov

National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8663
Gaithersburg MD 20899
Phone: 301 975 5171
Fax: 301 975 4052