I’m not sure about what you are saying here in your second sentence. Is it that you would like the conjugation of the verbs in various sentences be done differently to reflect…I’m not sure what. When it is written? When the item being discussed goes into play?
I agree that announcements made as early as possible in reference to the announcement subject matter going into effect would indeed be of interest to myself and I am guessing a great number of others.
Re:
To me, it sounded like Dan was saying they use present tense as a concession to people reading the announcement in the future. In other words, they might say they have done a great thing when it would be more accurate to say they will do a great thing. The reason given for why they would change the tense is because that great thing usually happens pretty quick so is likely to already have been done by the time most customers see the announcement.
I think most people* reading something (which was written in the past) are capable of understanding that the author would choose to use future tense because that was the appropriate tense to use at the time of publishing, but that doesn’t necessarially mean the written tense is still appropriate at the time of reading. Because of this, no concessions are necessary.
An analogy would be that I think the newspaper should say “the circus is coming to town tomorrow” even though that would no longer be strictly true a week later. The “mental gymnastics” required to correctly interpret the congugation used are well within most most people’s ability and using the correct tense has the benefit of also being truthful.
*I mean people who speak English, IIRC some languages don’t have tenses
Well, the suspense is over, the rollout has occurred, we can now see what the latest improvement is:
Drumroll…
I see what you are saying, So – the release of the information, if written in the present tense, should coincide the the actual implentation/release/etc. of that which it is telling us about. If it does not – then the tense of the announcement should match the actual state of the issue which is being announced ( we will do X, is coming, etc.)
I am guessing that the problem is syncing the two time frames – releasing X at the same time the forum is told about it, and the fact that the electronic media is constantly living – it isn’t like a newspaper which once printed, cannot be changed, and which will eventually completely vanish wrapping up our order of fish and chips, or lining the parakeet’s bird cage. We are so accustomed to the instantaneous nature of electronic communications that I think we are far less forgiving in our expectations, and far less tolerant of its inaccuracies. For a short time, if X isn’t ready but the information is already out there written in the present tense, then there will be some confusion for a portion of the population for a short period of time. Conversely, if it is written in the future tense and X has been released, then it looks rather awkward and confusing for a much longer time frame – what do you mean X will be released when I am already using it?
Ideally, you would have a method that would constantly update both the tenses of the communications and the content to continually match the actual conditions – but that would be a rather massive undertaking I think.
Was the ‘x’ to close the sidebar there before? If so, I must have missed it.
It was not, but I just checked and it now closes the sidebar altogether… Yea!!! We get the whole screen back. 
Exactly what I was thinking. I just didn’t want to celebrate and then find out the option to close it had been there for weeks!
…and it reappears when you next launch the app. 
Yeah, I’m ok with that. It would be better if it only reappeared after a new update, but I can certainly live with this.
Everyone’s use case will vary, but I like being able to look and see the last update and know that I haven’t missed one. I get what you’re saying, just like the more ‘visible’ approach.
True. I just get into a workflow groove sometimes, so I could see me closing that down automatically without actually looking at it! Like I said though, no worries. 
It could be solved by prefixing the change with “Coming soon:” and then removing the prefix when it is rolled out. Preferable replacing it with a date, so we can see what has changed since we last used the machine.
This is how the announcements section at the top of the forums works…many a person has complained loudly that it wasn’t good enough as once dismissed they wanted to reread it and couldn’t.
Please some some of the time and fail some all the time but never please all all the time.
Nope, it’s 7/11/17 
It is actually now on the sidebar of the app, which is what was being announced in advance. It probably always was in the footer.
Sorry, deleted my post before i saw that you had answered it!
Possibly the most confusing update so far. Wrong tense so we all we went looking for it before it was there and didn’t mention the sidebar was part of the GFUI app which most people can’t see anyway.
@dan, I agree with others here that, if it hasn’t happened yet, the announcement should not be written in the present tense. That will cause confusion and frustration. As @Tom_A said, an expected date would go a long way towards preventing that situation. Once a change has been made, I always appreciate an indication of when it actually went live.
Ah! I found it first and then went looking for the announcement.
Thank you.
I like it.
That’s a fantastic place to put stuff that I want to refer back to. I couldn’t remember the right words to forge with friends, and I spent 20- minutes looking for instructions, knowing it was an update.
This will fix that.
