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JT
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Date: 7/6/2007 10:00 pm · Subject: mini-beta · Rating: 0
I've decided that we as developers have done a fairly poor job of setting expectations for the users of WebGUI. What I mean is that there are several components in WebGUI that work fine, but are either not feature complete, or have some pretty sharp edges. We should have a way of letting users know that these components are usable, but aren't up to our standards.Google and other sites have been doing this for some time now. They put a little "BETA" on anything that is a work in progress. Gmail has been around for a long time and it still has a beta symbol on it. I want to set higher and higher standards for everything we do with WebGUI. But at the same time, I don't want to label all of WebGUI "Beta". 95% of WebGUI is stable and works great. So starting with WebGUI 7.3.20 I'm going to label the stuff with sharp edges with a (beta). There are currently six items that I'll apply this to. 1. Commerce (and with it Products and Subscriptions)2. Event Management3. Project Management4. Time Tracking5. Dashboard6. SQL Form All of the above work, are usable, and many people have been successful with them. However, I feel they all have a long way to go in usability, and feature completeness, so I think that we need to let users know that from the start. Any thoughts? JT ~ Plain Blackph: 703-286-2525 ext. 810fax: 312-264-5382http://www.plainblack.com I reject your reality, and substitute my own. ~ Adam Savage |
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greghacke
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Date: 7/6/2007 10:15 pm · Subject: Re: mini-beta · Rating: -5
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
Thoughts...
I think this is a good idea. However, can we mitigate
it - at least at the development level - so that we as developers understand
what it is about these features that are "sharp edges." This will give
some direction as what needs to be cleaned, etc. and provide an impetus on
changes that need to be made.
<!-- Converted from text/plain format -->
Greg Hacke From: webguidev@plainblack.com [mailto:webguidev@plainblack.com] On Behalf Of jt@plainblack.com Sent: Friday, 06 July 2007 23:00 To: greghacke@idlehandspress.com Subject: [wg-dev] mini-beta JT wrote: I've decided that we as developers have done a fairly poor job of setting expectations for the users of WebGUI. What I mean is that there are several components in WebGUI that work fine, but are either not feature complete, or have some pretty sharp edges. We should have a way of letting users know that these components are usable, but aren't up to our standards. Google and other sites have been doing this for some time now. They put a little "BETA" on anything that is a work in progress. Gmail has been around for a long time and it still has a beta symbol on it. I want to set higher and higher standards for everything we do with WebGUI. But at the same time, I don't want to label all of WebGUI "Beta". 95% of WebGUI is stable and works great. So starting with WebGUI 7.3.20 I'm going to label the stuff with sharp edges with a (beta). There are currently six items that I'll apply this to. 1. Commerce (and with it Products and Su! bscriptions)2. Event Management3. Project Management4. Time Tracking5. Dashboard6. SQL Form All of the above work, are usable, and many people have been successful with them. �However, I feel they all have a long way to go in usability, and feature completeness, so I think that we need to let users know that from the start. Any thoughts? JT ~ Plain Blackph: 703-286-2525 ext. 810fax: 312-264-5382http://www.plainblack.com I reject your reality, and substitute my own. ~ Adam Savage http://www.plainblack.com/webgui/dev/discuss/mini-beta |
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JT
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Date: 7/6/2007 10:38 pm · Subject: Re: mini-beta · Rating: 1
If you just take a look at any of these apps it should be obvious. But here are some examples:Event Management is great for registration, but has no real management capabilities (reporting, exporting, importing, searching for registered badges, badge printing) in present form. I'm adding some for 7.4, but I probably won't have time to add as many as I think need to be there. SQL Form I've already discussed in length in a previous thread. Commerce in it's present form is great for small retail, but it's not easy enough to use, and isn't scalable to complex transactions. For example, you can't sell something with a variable price and it has no way of dealing with something that is unique, meaning the quantity of the item can only ever be 1. And there shouldn't be a separate admin console product from the product asset. Project Management has no reporting and no exporting, and the task adding interface is somewhat clumbsy. Time Tracking has no reporting and no exporting, and also should not have it's own project management interface in addition to the PM asset. Dashboard actually works really well, and is very powerful. However, setting one up is a pretty big undertaking. I'd like to make that easier. In addition, the dashboard asset only allows for one per site, and it might be nice to allow multiple dashboards per site. |
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