For helpful advice on making your feature requests more valuable (and likely to be acted on) see article by Paul at RogueAmoeba (Audio Hijack) or the one by Brett Simmons' of Ranchero (NetNewsWire).
We are interested in hearing your ideas for features you would like to see added to the Helix product line. We only ask that you follow a few guidelines (see below) that allow us to handle your requests in the most efficient and effective manner.
This page is intended to give you an overview of the process, so you can send in your requests without our aid, but please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.
Feature requests are submitted through techdb, using the same form used to submit bug reports. The Type popup in the Problem Details section has a ‘Feature Request’ menu item which, naturally, should be selected for feature requests. If you are not familiar with using techdb, this page provided detailed instructions.
There are already hundreds of feature requests listed in techdb. We have made a concerted effort to gather up all of the requests submitted via various methods over the years (though some may have been missed — for that we apologize) and have consolidated them in techdb. You can find the entries that are specifically feature requests via the Feature Requests list. (The detailed instructions page shows where this menu item is found.)
Before you submit a new feature request, we do ask that you review the existing feature requests first, in order to avoid duplicate entries. The report form has a Votes section that you can use to ‘vote up’ existing requests you wish to see become reality.
This points to a major advantage of using techdb to handle feature requests: techdb is open to the whole community, so requests are open to discussion from all Helix users. By joining in the discussion for a feature request, you help to refine the request, and also help us better understand the underlying need behind it.
But if you think your request must already have been submitted, think again! You would be amazed at how many ‘obvious’ requests have been overlooked or, due to the tumult of Helix’s management transitions over the last 20 years, lost altogether. No request is too small and it is sometimes the ‘trivial’ improvements that bring the most delight.
When we started actively soliciting feature requests, we were amazed to see that about 30% of the requests were for features that already existed in Helix! The user simply didn’t know about it! A lot of small, but often-requested features were added during the transitional years (Helix 5.0 – 6.2) when you had to keep up with each new set of release notes to learn about these changes. (The last comprehensive reference manual is The Helix Reference which corresponds to the Helix 4.5.x releases.)
One way to update your knowledge of Helix features is to read through all of those release notes. A comprehensive list of the various release notes is available in our tips pages. Another way is to simply contact us and ask “Is it possible to… ?” before submitting a request.