"Development" vs "Stable" releases

[Steve8x8]

Dear GeoToad users:

For some months, there have been more or less parallel releases of 3.14.x and 3.15.y versions of GeoToad.
While this may have caused confusion to some of you, there's a rationale behind it.
The "Stable" 3.14 versions, primarily contain bug fixes and a few feature enhancements, while the 3.15 versions, flagged as "Development", include enhancements and conceptual changes.
The major difference between them perhaps is the introduction of "early login" which allows for queries to be run strictly after authenticating.
As always, there are pros and cons:
The major con probably is one login to gc.com per run ("old style" was to only do this before the first remote fetch of a cache description), including verification of the (stored) cookie, which will then be used throughout the session, and stored for later use.
This at the same time is also a pro, because an authorized query will return more information: found dates, and premium-member-only data (if you're a paying mamber, of course) - stuff you wouldn't see without prior login.
This means that 3.14 will not, under some circumstances, return PMO cache information (perhaps beyond very basic stuff), and there may arise problems to fill in "myfind*" templates properly.

Although being rather conservative and paranoid, I had made the switch for my own geocaching work long ago - and I'm thinking of making some not-so-far-in-the-future 3.15 version the official "Stable" one. This - next to my own "debugging by using" - requires thorough testing of the new approaches, of course.

Here's where the user base enters the stage. (Hey, that's you!)
 
I've been running some download statistics, monitoring Google Code's download counts on http://steve8x8.faehrwiese.selfhost.me/my-geotoad/dlcount/ - and these graphics show that recently a lot of downloaders have decided to fetch the Development version instead of the Stable one.
While the 3.14.7/3.15.2 scene was still dominated by 3.14.7, this has considerably changed for 3.14.8/3.15.4. And there has been no announcement of 3.15 versions on Freshmeat/Freecode!
I take this as an indication that the new features are welcome, and there's indeed some value added.
(I'm still wondering why the percentage is higher for Windows than for Debian/Ubuntu... )

Here's what I'd like you to do:
- If you feel a bit adventurous, but you're still running a 3.14 version, please consider trying 3.15. (It will use a new cookie file, leaving your old one intact.)
- If you want to stay with 3.14, don't hesitate to tell me why.
- Unless there's a user survey (to find out what's important for you to have in GeoToad, and what's "nice to have"), there's another way to vote for features to be merged into Stable - just visit the Issues page of the project, and "star" the issues in "Started" state (which means that the feature has been added to the Development series), this way showing me "it's important". (Of course you may also show your support to the other issues.)
Some of the issues are dependent on others, so it may require fixing one thing before addressing another one (the *.list file in my personal file space discusses this).
- If you have questions, feel free to email me.
- If you have issue reports, email me - I'd like to sort them out "silently", without worrying "Stable" users.
Your feedback is appreciated!

Thanks, and
Cheers, S.