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Other Shareware
Programs:
AnyCard.
 (For processing credit
 cards)
AnyBook.
(Business software for 
 small publishers)
RaceAid.
(Freeware for athletic 
 racing events)

AnyOrder is based on research work that I started in 1988.  At that time, I was developing a program called AnyBook.  The first four versions of AnyBook were all created for the DOS operating system and all used the Dbase language as its structural foundation.

Initially, it was developed out of a need for a software program to produce invoices, calculate sales tax, prepare annual sales, and take care of the day-to-day tasks in our publishing business.  It was also used for general invoicing and order processing purposes by two departments at Idaho State University where I have worked for many years.  It worked fine and did the job.  But the process to improve it soon became a personal quest of sorts, a quest that led me further and further afield.

If you've spent any time looking at business software, you know that there's a lot of scary stuff out there: difficult to understand with arcane language that only a CPA can understand.  Moreover, business software often requires the user to follow pre-determined procedures and patterns.  It's a top-down approach, regulated by some soon all-knowing invisible, Oz-like wizard behind the curtain of the software's interface.  It can be downright frustrating.  Sometimes, you just want to throw back the curtain and yell:  come out of there you phony wizard!

Such a software approach takes away one's creativity, and it most certainly takes one's freedom to work in a natural way. So I went looking for a different way.

I did a lot of experimentation in the early versions.  I was trying to find a flexible and relaxed approach, and to develop an underlying pattern of logic that duplicated real world situations.  To do so I always tried to keep in mind how one naturally works in a small or home-based business, rather than the other way around which forces the user to work like the programming language behind the software.

Admittedly, DOS was a difficult operating system under which to try to achieve those goals, but then came Windows, and eventually Windows 95, 98, 2000.  Fortunately, the Dbase language which I had stayed with because of the stability and reliability of its database file system also went through a paradigm shift, giving programmers tremendous new freedom and the ability to concentrate on user interaction.

As I made changes to the software, it became more and more important in our own business.  There's nothing like developing software, using it on a daily basis, and depending on it, to really give you an incentive to do it right.  Through it all, my wife, Kathy (and president of our business) kept me honest, giving me immediate feedback when something wasn't understandable or didn't work in an easy, natural way.

Finally in 2000, after twelve years of experimentation and five major versions of the software, Kathy and I decided it was time to make it more widely available.  Early in the year, we posted Version 5 of AnyBook on the major internet download sites as shareware.  People could download the full-feature program at no cost and try it out.  We couldn't have been more delighted when one of the first businesses to download it and try it, wrote back and told us that he had never seen anything like it and that he loved it.  From AnyBook's sucess rose AnyOrder which first became available in 2002.

I continue to solicit feedback from users, explore new features, hone and polish.  Folks in the business world and software reviewers are telling us that's pretty darn good as it is.  But stay tuned, it's only going to keep getting better.

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